


Gemini Storm

by RiverDelta



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate History, Comedy, Complete, Crimes & Criminals, Dark Fantasy, Existential Crisis, Exploitation In-Universe of Storytelling Tropes, Fantasy, Gen, Major Character Injury, Novel, Science Fiction, Serial Novel, Space Opera
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-15 21:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 53,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8073139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiverDelta/pseuds/RiverDelta
Summary: A complete novel.Two pairs of two enemies created the storm. It's a matter of life and death. Emphasis on "death".or,Characters both exploit storytelling tropes and grapple with at times their own nonexistence while aliens, angels, crime lords, and others play a high-stakes game of chess.This somehow started as a dark fantasy story.





	1. Waiting for Rain

_Raekin Klynnet stood proudly in his clay-red wizard’s robes, his wizened face on display as he held a thin man in robes that seemed to be spun from cloud-wisps, lifting him above the ground. Blue flame begun to melt the flailing god’s head, the fire enveloping Raekin’s own hand but not seeming to do any damage. He smiled. Just a bit, but he smiled. Immortality was overrated, apparently._

_Ferra Klynnet crossed her blade with Maros, god of War, Honor, and Devotion, her spatha at his neck, his larger claymore awkwardly pushed back to block the strike. The very edge of the swords glowed with a white-hot corona. So this was how a god fell. She eyed his hand greedily. If his severed hand replaced hers, she would take on his title, and be a god in his place. She smiled._

_The First Summoner-_

“What the fuck is this bullshit?” Tyrrus said, looking at the bard who addressed the motley crowd. “Seriously. Someone please explain why the fuck this matters! This is so stupid.”

“Tyrrus-”

“Kingsson Tyrrus.” He corrected, rolling his eyes. “I’m the son of the king of Lea, I’m the Kingsson. You don’t get to refer to me without that title.”

“Your grace, the Kingdom of Lea is long-since disbanded. You disbanded it and sold the land to the Angel Rock Colony. You are as common as anyone else, even given your anomalous heritage as the heir of a kingdom, which frankly is a bit odd in and of itself. A mortal king?”

“I still keep the title, and I’ll ask the same question. What the fuck is this bullshit, and why are you wasting our times with it?”

“The Godslayers are the three liches who constantly fight over the northwest. Of all the stories I could tell, this one is one of the most relevant!” The bard sighed, his multicolored clothing making his indignancy look quite silly.

“That’s the one story everyone knows.” Tyrrus stood up and addressed the small crowd of assorted paladins, warriors, farmers, traders, and such. “ _Orb of Flame.”_ He whispered, sending a globe of gelatinous fire from his fingertips at the bard as if he were tossing a squelchball underhand.

The bard quickly dodged and ran to the door, clutching his lute. “What is wrong with you? Why would you do that? Who throws fireballs at people for telling them a story?” He continued to shout, his invective diminishing in coherence.

“ _Spear of Flame.”_ He whispered, shooting a long tube of the same jelly-fire as the orb at the bard from his palm, closing his eyes and relaxing a bit. The bard ran off out the door, and Tyrrus smiled, satisfied that he wouldn’t have to listen to some useless bullshit about a bunch of great heroes who became liches locked in eternal war.

So with no bard to tell them stories, the crowd begun to disperse, and Tyrrus heard comments such as “What a waste”, “What kind of asshole tries to kill the bard?”, “If that wasn’t the Kingsson, I’d cut his head clean off for this foolishness”, and “Does anyone want to go to the tavern? The gods know I need a drink”. Tyrrus stepped from his stool and lay down on the wooden floor of the meeting-hall, curling up into a fetal position and closing his eyes.

In the red robe he wore, he looked like a peculiar sleeping jellyfish, or a man with a red curtain or tablecloth draped over him. This wasn’t so bad. A quickly emptying hall, no bard to go on about crap, just a short-haired wizard and a lot of hours of sleep to catch up on. When one read books of arcane knowledge, philosophy, and books of arcane knowledge as much as Tyrrus did, one often found themselves lacking in sleep.

Truly, this would be a lovely, wonderful time of relaxation and happiness, in which Tyrrus could bask in the soft, comfortable hardwood floor, pray to Heyri, god of Building, that he didn’t get a splinter in the face, and just...sleep. As one did on a hardwood floor in a public building.

“Kingsson Tyrrus, Kingsson Tyrrus! Paladin Taylor wishes to speak with you! She insists on it! She says it is of the utmost importance and that you should come to see her at once! A matter of good and evil, life and death!” Tyrrus opened his eyes to see some sort of messenger, a thin man with a crooked nose and bruises all over his body.

“Gods dammit! You fucking asshole! I was just about to sleep!” The messenger rolled his eyes at the man trying to sleep on a solid, splintery floor in a public building at the midpoint of the sun’s arc across the sky. “Your grace, I understand that, but Paladin Taylor and Natrix are waiting for you, and even though you may be the Kingsson, you have no real power other than what your extraordinary gift bought you. The Paladin, however...”

“Of course, of course, I’ll be there within the instant.” He picked himself off of the floor like a man who had had far too much wine (although our dear Tyrrus was in fact sober), and glared at the messenger, racing in his shining leather boots and long, impractical robe down past the messenger, pushing the man aside like water in front of a ship. “Ass.” The messenger muttered, as quietly as he could. Tyrrus didn’t stop to say anything.

Tyrrus did stop, however, a few meters away from the door to the crude meeting-hall. “Messenger. Where exactly am I supposed to meet them?” The messenger swore in whatever foreign language the Angel Rock colonists spoke (Tyrrus heard once it was called “Descore” or something equally odd), but responded. “Sir, Paladin Taylor wishes to see you immediately at Sea Angel Port.”

Angels, angels, angels, everything about these people was fucking angels. Tyrrus shook his head in bemusement. It was some kind of cultural obsession. Beautiful and terrifying monsters from the heavens, some of which, well....The Angel Rock summoners could attest to the fear that angels represented. But that wasn’t important right now. Just kind of stupid. Tyrrus ran down the cobblestones street past the wattle and daub huts towards the foreboding greyish-black ocean, eventually ending up on the dock itself, by a large cog ship marked with the blue Angel Rock angel silhouette sitting on the water.

Standing on the dock were two figures. A woman in mail armor, with a tabard bearing a stylized blue silhouette of an angel, her face worn and her eyes full of smothered hope, like a blue river marred with grey volcanic ash, stood there, looking frankly a bit bored more than anything else. Next to her was a tall, thin, even skeletal woman in a faded green tunic dress, with a mantle covering that as well as her head. Her eyes were colored and the pupils reptilian, and two of her teeth were elongated into fangs. Her entire body glowed faintly, a dying candle glow.

When the second woman spoke, it was with a slight hiss and a forked tongue. “Hello, Tyrrus. Paladin Taylor. Might I ask what took our wizardly friend so long?” She smirked a bit, though it was hard, given the fangs. Tyrrus wondered at the moment if she wished there was a stool or rock of some kind to sit on on the docks, but concluded that most likely that wasn’t a concern, and simply took to people watching.

After a few seconds of Tyrrus staring blankly at what looked like soldiers or mercenaries boarding the cog next to them, the one with the angel icon, Taylor, looked at Tyrrus and spoke. “Tyrrus. You. We’re talking. Are you able to listen or not? You look distracted, and this is very important.”

“Sure, sure, fine. What is it?” Tyrrus seemed largely unconvinced of the importance of this meeting, especially compared to his glorious, glorious sleep. This clearly couldn’t be that much of a problem, or a mission, or whatever.

“Kerubiel demands that the three of us go on a holy mission to fight evil.” The snake woman, Natrix, looked to Taylor, who seemed solemn about this. This was, of course, the Kerubiel. The very flames that dance around the throne of the Highest Angel. Tyrrus muttered something about “fucking angels”.

“I was hoping to get out and spread my philosophy, anyway, but honestly? I kind of wish you’d stayed alive, Natrix. Getting that angelic master of yours in your head is annoying. Mostly for me, because now I have to be under his supervision, and play nice, and all of that crap. _Minor Orb of Flame.”_ Idly, he tossed a pebble-sized _Orb of Flame_ at the water, creating some steam.

A voice like the crackling of coals and the booming of a thunderclap begun to speak. It was like Natrix’s voice, but only in a superficial sense. Natrix’s mouth was the filter through which this voice spoke. “I do not leave the side of His Glory lightly, wizard. Know that my word is law, and nothing less. I respect one so devoted to the cleansing flame. Do not make me feel that that respect is misplaced.”

“Are you ever going to leave Natrix?”

“That is a childish question. I do not plan to leave her, just as your mind does not plan to leave your body. When Natrix died and I was given her body, I became the lord of this estate. Natrix is merely a serf.”

“Do you value her?”

“Not particularly.”

“Then why choose her? Why mark her like this? Why a snake?”

“I was given it to me, as the body was avaliable, and one does not refuse a gift from the Highest Angel. I marked it to show the world what she was like morally during her time in life.”

“You’re kind of a monster, Kerubiel.” Tyrrus said to Natrix, who was now glowing white-hot, her snake eyes now glowing miniature infernos. Taylor and Tyrrus squinted and looked away just to be around the being, and no doubt onlookers would look at this scene as well. A summoner’s angel manifesting, and the Kingsson insulting that angel?

“I am an angel. I am flames, I am the light of His Glory’s essence. One of the Exalted. My morality is not yours. You, however, are a monster. Your “philosophy” is to improve the world by intentionally falling into villainy.”

“You’re misrepresenting me! I’m trying to prove to the rest of this continent that the idea that wizards have to be good and therefore that wizards are morally obligated to rule is crap. By being the most destructive, violent, murderous wizard I can. If I become known like the Godslayers, known across the continent for my terrible deeds, the lies that bolster the entire system will have to-”

“You and I both know that you did not create this philosophy of yours yourself, if such a stupid and poorly thought out idea can be considered a philosophy. Honestly, only the teachings of His Glory should have that title. All else is irrelevant.”

“...Fine. I didn’t come up with it. I was taught it. As a child. Lady Baines taught it to me. It doesn’t mean that it’s any less valid. Sometimes to change a system you need to change minds, and sometimes to do that you have to-”

“Do the things you already enjoy doing?”

“That doesn’t affect anything, and...Wait? How do you know that Lady Baines taught me how to live my life?” Tyrrus tried to think this over. Even an Exalted wasn’t omniscient, so the theology books read, and he had never told Natrix. She simply hadn’t cared to ask.

“I do not share such details with a brute murderer on a deluded quest. Know that your world is but a shadow of the land of the spirits and Exalted which envelops and encircles it. Suffice to say that I am an angel and you are a madman. It is natural for me to know things that you do not. I am fire itself, you are a violent monkey  in a red robe. Speaking to the more competent member of this little viper’s friendship-”

“Who’s the viper?” Tyrrus asked, unfamiliar with the Angel Rock idiom, one that Kerubiel had picked up presumably some other time, through what Tyrrus liked to assume were horrifying and dubiously moral means.

“It’s an idiom. A friendship of vipers. A group of dangerous and unstable people in a nonetheless tight coalition. Namely the loyal, battle-hardened and valiant Paladin Taylor, devoted servant of His Glory, and you, the aforementioned violent monkey in a red robe.”

“I’m not convinced that you aren’t just calling me a viper, but at any rate, please do continue with your speech. It’s very interesting for the two of us who aren’t celestial beings of great power or whatever.”

“As I was saying, Paladin Taylor, I have selected you, my host, Natrix, and the violent monkey in the red robe for one specific purpose. As I said, I have summoned you for a great task, but I did not mention the specifics. I expect the righting of wrongs and such to come as a secondary concern to a more important task. The righting of one specific wrong. Lady Baines, the First Vampire.”

Tyrrus stopped at that. To “right” Lady Baines? He would love to say no, to refuse, to further insult the semi-deific entity before him, or to even question the morality of Kerubiel outright puppeteering (and who knew what else he could do to her mind) Natrix. There were stories of those who refused tasks given to them by the Highest Angel or any one of his many representatives. The lucky refusers ended up smothered by the gift of useless wings of flame that grew out of their backs, covering them in burns and leaving permanent scarring. So he stayed compliant, guessing that the “monster” comment was as far as he could go. “Of course, Exalted Kerubiel. Consider the task done.”

Taylor grasped her spatha uncomfortably, looking at Natrix with some concern. She lowered herself to one knee. “Exalted Kerubiel, if I may? This is no mere human. Lady Baines governs an entire domain to herself, as one of the Immortal Lords, and she does not appreciate holy warriors entering her domain. Unless you expect to do it on your own, and considering that you asked us to help to begin with-”

“I have faith in you, and I expect that you will have faith in yourselves. I expect you to meet up at the Abbot Stables by the northern reaches of the colony, by the fields, by sundown, with supplies for the journey in hand.”

Taylor nodded. “Of course, Exalted Kerubiel. I shall do it as you command, without regret nor mercy.” She spoke the words with a sincere reverence for the promise she made.

“For that, I think you.” Kerubiel responded. “I would not trust many others to oversee this mission, especially when once we arrive at the stables, I will give control over to Natrix. You are a true paladin.”

“Thank you, Exalted Kerubiel.” She smiled a bit and bowed. She didn’t smile much, honestly, but it was a bit. Sure, it was forced, almost certainly due to some kind of absurd etiquette or equally absurd honor.

**FERRA KLYNNET:**

The Greatest Warrior in the World and Immortal Lord of Dassen sat on her throne of wood and intertwining iron, a chair carved as such that it was meant to look as though a wooden hunting dog lying down beared the weight of the seat. Of course, the four legs of metal held up the seat more than the sculpture itself.

She sat on the throne in her leather armor, segmented amber greaves matching an ornate leather chestplate with segmented and hardened leather covering her upper arms. The chestplate itself was marked with a silhouette of a stag’s head, carved a bit into the leather and painted yellow.

At her feet was a ramp built of wood and rock, and below that, a vast, mostly unfurnished hall (except for a dining table that had never seen use in the corner). She stood up, the tunic brushing against her bones. She tried to sigh, but she had not had vocal cords in seven hundred years.

She always forgot that when she tried to sigh.

The lich stood up slowly and walked down the ramp, looking at her barren hall. Her brother no doubt had created a hall of magical grace worthy of his status as the god of Magic, her sister likely had the most beautiful creatures of the entire Planar Web at her command, and her? She was the god of War, Honor, and Devotion, and while the “Many Planes” were largely ephemeral and her brother was always unable to see beyond his nose (for as long as he had a nose), Ferra was different.

Not better, mind you, most likely worse. Her godly demesne and apathy probably limited the glory of her domain, honestly.

She couldn’t master the cosmos themselves nor bend the world to her whims if she so chose. But she had to answer prayers. Like tickling little thoughts from a cacophony of voices. She was certain that her two enemies did not have the same issues. After all, how many wizards were there in a world where magic was kept secret and merely being magic was a sign of moral invincibility, and how many summoners were there at all?

This was excepting the Angel Rock summoners, who, instead of having to unravel the key to interplanar travel as well as the interaction and manipulation of interplanar entities on their own, simply _died_ to gain the summoner’s power, and who thusly prayed to the Highest Angel, not to the First Summoner.

At any rate, there were few wizards and almost no summoners, but warriors, generals, knights, slaves sent to war, men-at-arms...

Ferra heard their desperate prayers, nearly all of the time. She knew as well as anyone that there was no such thing as a complete peace on the Continent, and so the lich god had been tormented with the desperate prayers of the high and the low as they marched towards death or sent others to do the same.

Of course, she couldn’t do anything about it. If she left her realm on horseback to simply grant even one man-at-arms’ request, Dassen would be overrun by either the First Summoner’s Otherworld or Raekin’s Redspire, and one side would definitively be able to defeat the other with the added resources and slaves of Dassen, allowing either a manipulative lich god of Magic homicidally obsessed with magical knowledge to do as he wished with the Continent in some long game she didn’t bother thinking too hard about or allowing....the First Summoner to undo logic itself. Best that they were kept occupied.

She thought about this for a bit. Most realms had some kind of logical name. Dassen, for example, was named after the River Dassen, Lea was named after the first king’s wife, Leanthea, in a slightly naive gesture typical of the first king of Lea, Lady Baines’ Essin was named after the people who once lived near the modern town of Essinvale, and the list went on.

Only two exceptions existed. While she was no true intellectual, she was a seven hundred and fifty year old lich, so she had some time to think, especially when fighting in the Great Lich War and leading her armies inevitably got boring three hundred years or so in (She still had to do it, it just wasn’t fun anymore). The Angel Rock colonists named things and people for practical, even slightly dull reasons. Angel Rock, people’s names being related to a profession somehow... But that was to be expected from a foreign culture.

Her siblings, though?

Redspire was closest to the purely descriptive tradition of Descore, the mother nation of the Angel Rock colonists, but even then, it described nothing but a single building, the palace that Raekin had erected.

Similarly, the First Summoner used the foreign obvious and descriptive method of naming things, but her realm she simply dubbed the Otherworld, and with good reason, as... She tried not to think about the Otherworld.

At any rate, it was certainly strange, she thought, that the two didn’t bother to consider the original occupants (former occupants, in the case of the Otherworld) of the land they took. But all of this was just musing. One did that a lot as a lich.

_Please don’t let me die._

_Ferra give me the knowledge to guide my soldiers._

_May Ferra’s sword be in my hands._

_By the gods, please just...Walk away, I’m wounded, I’m wounded, you don’t need to finish me off!_

Ferra ignored these prayers. The asking, begging, and pleading was anything but new to her. So she exited her hall and entered the overgrown, ignored courtyard of her fort. How long had it been since she left her hall? How long had it been since the gardener and the monks passed to the realm of the god of Sleep? Strangest of all, why hadn’t she been awoken by a subject for battle?

She knew her family. Peace was not an option. Raekin sought Dassen and Otherworld artifacts and knowledge, Otherworld sought to overwhelm Redspire to spread to the rest of the Continent, and Ferra and the First Summoner needed to work together if necessary to keep Raekin in check. So why had the garden overgrown?

She thought she was seven hundred years old. She hoped she was that young.

She walked through the ruin, and it was a ruin, and looked at the sky with eye sockets, serving only through the inherent magic of her being, and saw the storm clouds come.

  
The lich welcomed the rain and lightning.


	2. In the Service of Heaven

**TAYLOR:**

The three of them walked down the dirt path. Had she looked behind her, she supposed, she might have seen the Abbot Stables grow smaller and smaller. She only supposed this, however, as she did not look backwards.

That was a lie. She wished she didn’t look backwards. It would have made things so much easier. But no, she just had to do it. She had to look back every few minutes, watch the stables gradually shrink in her vision.

Every look, she wished she could walk back. But then she would simply look to Natrix and the faint white glow she gave off, and she would be reminded of her own duty. Was it a duty if she had no say in it? Did that actually define it being a duty, as opposed to a voluntary task?

Did it matter?

She eventually vowed not to look back as her leather boots hit the dirt. She held her hand at her side, by the sheathe to her spatha, but didn’t draw it. Tyrrus started to walk closer to her, and he whispered something, his hand giving off light as if it were a torch. “When you become the most vile wizard on the Continent, are you going to try and kill Natrix and me?” She didn’t sound afraid, nor curious. It was as if she already knew his answer, and simply wanted to confirm it.

“Why are you asking me this?”

“I would hate to have to gut you too, Tyrrus.” She said, completely seriously. “If you try and turn on me, I will hunt you down like a dog and put you down. If you think that it’ll make some great story of your evil by turning on your friends, then reconsider.”

“I wasn’t going to kill or even hurt any of you!”

“Would you kindly tell me why we are friends, again, Tyrrus?” She asked. He shuffled around as he walked a bit, quite awkwardly. He made a muffled exhaling noise and looked away from the paladin, hoping to just drop the conversation.

_Lady Baines’ realm was nothing like Sister-Initiate Taylor had ever seen before. In place of horses driving carriages there were machines of metal, crude ones, piloted by what looked like statues made of baked clay, both of which moved under their own accord, the machines carrying not just hay and produce but more esoteric things. Bent metal devices, ticking things with numbers painted on, that sort of thing. A very young man sat on some kind of wide metal chair, reading a book. He was the only human she could see._

_The moving machines moved with their cargo over cobblestone streets lit by bulbous glass contraptions that glowed. The buildings were not wattle and daub but towers of stone. In the distance, a metal contraption the size of a castle keep dug away at a trench diligently. The Initiate did not intend to be here. But she was._

_She felt the manacles (a word she knew only because it was mentioned when they restrained her) dig into her skin. Initiates were not allowed to carry a blade outside of temple grounds, and so when she was taken from one of her usual night runs to the port and back and vanished away to the realm of Lady Baines (she assumed, given the pale woman with fangs who had done the magical vanishing in the night), she was unarmed._

_Not defenseless, unarmed._

_At her side was the mighty wizard and the First Vampire, Lady Baines, who was quite squat for a vampire. This was simple, then._

_Taylor begun to speak. “Lady Baines, perhaps we can come to some sort of-”_

_Lady Baines seemed about to respond, but Taylor ducked down and opened her mouth, gouging a huge chunk of flesh from Baines’ neck with her mouth once she clamped down as hard as she could. She spit out the dead flesh as if she were vomiting the stuff up, but headbutted Baines as hard as she could. It hurt. She could care less._

_“Let me go.” She yelled, battering Lady Baines with her skull over and over again. She then bit off the ear of Lady Baines, the First Vampire and Immortal Lord of Essin. Which she spat out at her. “Give me a sword.”_

_Lady Baines kept attempting to cast a spell, but the problem was that she couldn’t cast if she was being headbutted repeatedly and if she were bleeding out of two different massive bite wounds. So you had phrases like “Ultimate Fire-”, “Earthsh-”, “Unrav-”, and the like, but interrupted by the sound of an Initiate beating the vampire with her forehead. All that Taylor felt was pain, her head ringing, her whole body crying, her eyes barely seeing straight. But she could see the faintest outline of Baines, and so she kept going. “Sword. Give me a sword.”_

_At that, the very young man on the bench stood up. “Holy shit. Did....Did she just bite off your ear and spit it back at you? Look, Lady Baines, can I please keep this one? She seems like kind of a badass, honestly, and I need stronger test subjects. The ones from your slaughterhouses keep dying.”_

_Taylor honestly had no idea what to say to that. The young man’s voice was kind of squeaky and obviously overconfident in his own abilities, and, well, asking for “test subjects” said a lot about a person._

_After some deliberation through the worst migraine headache she’d ever had in her life, she spat at him. He shrugged. “Lesser Orb of Acid.” At that, a glob of jelly the size of a pebble hit her shoulder and left a red and white mark of burned skin. She grit her teeth. The pain was all blending together at this point. “You won’t break me.”_

_“That’s the point, dumbass. As long as I can keep you around, it means that I can learn things, and you just took acid to the shoulder after biting through someone’s flesh with flat teeth. You’ll be around for a while. Sure, she’ll regenerate quickly enough, being that you don’t have a stake or the like, but, good try. Lesser Sleep.” He muttered, casting a spell. From his hand a purple ball of energy about the size of a squelchball appeared._

_“Aren’t Sleep spells supposed to be clouds of mist or someth-”_

_The iron-hard ball hit her in the face like a falling boulder, and with a loud crack, sure enough, she was asleep._

“We’re friends because we met by chance.” Tyrrus said, still not making eye contact with the Paladin. His boots hit the dirt as they walked down the winding road, which snaked between so many brown-green hills. The light from his hand and the faint glow of Natrix were the only source of light as they walked, and every so often, Natrix would look back, to one side, then the other, and then back straight ahead.

_She woke up feeling a horrible pain in her face, the pain from the headbutting mostly subsided, and opened her eyes. To her surprise, she wasn’t hanging from some ceiling in a dungeon with her chest split open and the blood and juices dripping down to be collected for some purpose or another. What that purpose might be, she had no idea, but it was none of her concern._

_She didn’t plan to die._

_She didn’t feel death or torturous agony, though. In fact, what she did see was quite odd indeed. She lay in a bed, which was more comfortable than anything she’d ever slept on in her entire life. She at first thought the softness was a quality of a featherbed and wool mattress typical of the highest nobles on the Continent, but she shifted around a bit and found that there was a strange bounciness in the mattress._

_Far from a bolster behind her head, a pillow, sheets, blankets, and a coverlet, as one would expect from a bed of this quality, there was simply a white sheet layered over a teal one, both tucked in roughly, and a pillow, which she felt the back of her head press against. “...Get me a sword.” She recognized the other figure in the room immediately._

_He sat at the edge of the odd bed and shrugged. “Sorry. I would love to be stabbed to death, really, but, well...” He laughed a bit. “Look, I had Dr. Teague do what she could, but I almost completely avoided all medical magic for pretty much all of this time, and-”_

_“Why would you avoid all medical magic?” Other people might ask “What am I doing here?”, “Who are you?”, or even “How in the name of the First Summoner, Master of the Many Planes, did you manage to find a bed this unnervingly comfortable?” But no. That wasn’t Taylor. She took the first question’s answer as irrelevant, the second as equally irrelevant, and the third as so completely irrelevant that it wasn’t even worth commenting on inside her head._

_Taylor, even as a mere Initiate, was used to not knowing things, and she was fine with that. It wasn’t her job to know every little detail about the world. Those people were known as “wizards”, and look at where it got them. That or “natural philosophers”, a job so incredibly boring that she would take magical madness over its mundanity. Angel Rock collectively gave so little of a shit about natural philosophers and their writings on rabbits and increasingly convoluted equations that there was actually something of an underground of letters passed between Descore and Angel Rock made of frustrated natural philosophers trying to figure out the great truths of life and the universe under a society which did not give a flying fuck._

_“Why avoid medical magic? Honestly, I kind of think that all wizards do. I mean, Lady Baines did. It’s weak until you get to be on the level of pre-ascension-to-divinity Raekin Klynnet, where you can heal armies of wounds, and by that point, who even cares? Medical magic sucks. I did what every other wizard probably did. Learn Cure Disease early in your wizardly career, because disease is fucking everywhere, and just continually improve Cure Disease alongside your actual wizardly work. Nobody gives a shit about healing.”_

_“What about warriors? Surely any warriors with an ounce of common sense would try and learn magic, if only to heal themselves in battle. Or how do you heal yourself after someone, say, tries to stab you with a spatha?”_

_He laughed at that suggestion. “How many magical teachers do you think there are, anyway? Most of the time, they’re either Immortal Lords too focused on their research (and they always are that focused on their research, in some way or another), or dead. Because wizards who get into close combat usually end up that way.”_

_“Weird question to ask.” He said, looking at Taylor with some suspicion. “Why do wizards avoid medical magic? You could ask anything. Why you’re here. Who I am. And yet you just asked about medical magic.”_

_“Yes. That is in fact what I asked. Are you going to torture me already?”_

_“...Not today, actually. I don’t want to pay Dr. Teague. She takes money that doesn’t exist in order to do things that don’t make sense, and so I’ll need to wait a bit before she’s in the mood to take more Essin rems.”_

_“Rems?”_

_“Essin uses paper money meant to represent a sufficient quantity of gold, and things in Essin are valued by the buyer and seller in this method. One strip of paper signed by the treasurer, one rem.”_

_“Why not just use barter?”_

_“Most people do, but there are always those in high places who have their little games with rems that none of us worry about. It’s Lady Baines’ peculiar kind of madness. She likes little ideas from other places.”_

_Taylor tuned most of that out. “Right, right. It’s a foolish system used by idiots. I’m glad we have that established. If you aren’t going to torture me now, what do you plan to do? Talk to me? I’d prefer the knives and acid.”_

_“I’ve been nothing but helpful.”_

_“Get me a sword, then.”_

_“No!”_

_Taylor sighed and mustered her strength, standing up for a second before falling to the bed and feeling herself bounce, of all things, just a bit, but it was there. Damned bed, driving her to madness._

_“You don’t want to know why I’ve been so helpful?”_

_“Not really.”_

_“This...isn’t going like my usual meetings with test subjects. First they ask a lot of stupid questions or melodramatically refuse to talk. You’ve done something in between. Then they insult me with, you know, words. You’re mostly just apathetic or asking about weird, minor things.”_

_“Sorry to disappoint, then.”_

_“No, it’s refreshing. Kingsson Tyrrus, son of the former King of Lea, apprentice to Lady Baines.”_

_“If you aren’t going to start torturing me, what exactly do you plan to do? If you’re intending for-” She said, eyes narrowed. Finally, finally, she shuffled off to the edge of the bed, her legs hanging down. Her feet barely touched the shiny wooden floor. The neatly hewn planks and shiny coat to the wood, she thought, implied the sort of usual slightly alien nature of this-_

_And she stopped caring._

_“Please. I haven’t felt romance or lust since I was born, and considering some of the things I’ve seen in Lady Baines’ employ, I find it pretty fucking hard to believe that I’ll start now. So don’t get your hopes up.”_

_“Luckily, you and I seem to share the same condition. Although for me it simply means that adhering to a vow of chastity is exceedingly easy.”_

In the present, Paladin Taylor shrugged. “A meeting of chance would not end with seventeen burning wounds across my body, six _laser scalpel_ cuts that haven’t fully healed, three strips of charred skin from a heated iron bar, and the results of a failed drawing and quartering.”

Tyrrus nodded at that. “The drawing and quartering was a very bad day, and look on the bright side. You survived, and the horses are dead. That’s all that matters. I still don’t know how you’re still around.”

“I don’t die.”

“Everything dies, eventually. You die, I die, we all die. It’s kind of the way the _universe_ works. We have to figure out what the fuck to do with the time we have, especially since the gods are too busy jerking off or fighting each other to do anything.” _Universe._ One of those foreign words. It rolled around on his tongue like a piece of rotten meat. The word was useful but it strained the mind.

 

**NATRIX:**

She watched the two of them talk and reminisce quietly. Perfectly quietly. Even her footsteps were completely silent. Not muffled, not cat’s-steps. Completely silent. There simply was no sound. She moved without sound, either. Her tunic dress brushed up against itself, and there was no sound whatsoever.

The road began to grow more and more steep and straight, and while Taylor seemed to be stoically walking up the hill, and Natrix simply did not acknowledge that there was any difficulty in walking uphill at all, Tyrrus, as usual, whined.

She ignored the whining. That was a single insignificant part of a slightly less insignificant whole. She continued walking silently. One might assume that Kerubiel, the angel, was the alien being in their peculiar relationship. That would be partially true. Kerubiel was indeed alien, but he thought in terms that could be understood by humans. An angel. A divine being intended to interact with humans in some way or another. One of the inspirations for humanity, so she had heard.

He followed no law but the rule of the Highest Angel, no morality but the will of the heavens. He was ruthless, controlling...He was the voice in her head that told her to commit impulsive actions.

His burning voice was not often there, but his presence in the back of what mind she had was felt.

But she was an Angel Rock summoner. Once human, now anything but. Once emotional, complex, and impulsive. Natrix in life once stabbed a captive for calling her a whore. She once murdered a room full of Essinmen playing cards and told the Elder Paladin in charge of disciplining her that they were members of an enemy nation ruled by a vampire. This worked, and she suffered no consequences for her actions.

Natrix in life-

_Paladin Natrix stood in Heaven in front of the Highest Angel himself. His appearance was that of a man in Highest Paladin’s garb, beautiful shining armor and a tabard with incredibly complex detailing in blue and bronze. His face, though, was like that of a sculpture, or a doll. Most accurately, a brass mask which hovered on a burnt stump over no actual face. The mask did not move as he spoke. “Paladin Natrix. I would say it is a pleasure to meet you, but you have flouted my commandments, used my rules to justify pointless slaughter, and shown how willing you are to abandon my will as you see fit, with your frequent drinking, carousing, and acts of brutal lust.”_

_“So I’m not going to meet the Exalted, am I?”_

_“You even fail to treat the Highest Angel with the dignity that the creator of the very concepts of Good, Law, and Order deserves.”_

_“Well, good fucking job actually doing that. I wanted to follow your rules, I tried hard. Then I realized that none of it goddamn matters. For every person who dies for your good, nothing ever changes, nothing ever advances... Even our culture. The natural philosophers. My family were natural philosophers. Do you think that they appreciated being completely neglected? If you have sole control over all of Descore, including Angel Rock, explain why you let them be ignored. Hell, explain the murderers, the crap Paladins like me. What the fuck makes you the Highest Angel if the Continent hasn’t gotten any better? So fuck it. I’m not holding myself to some standard anymore. I like getting paid, but I learnt to use the rules. I can’t have sex or drink, so I got people I didn’t like killed by accusing them of it and forging evidence. I must follow your word to the letter so I found contradictions in your word. The Seven Tomes say that in Passage 134 “no man shall take from another what is his”, but in Narration 34 “Kerubiel took from the vampires their sun”. There are thousands of things like this, and I had all of them memorized.”_

_“There was another who thought as you did. Do you seek to exploit and defy my commandments, even in death, once I send you to meet the Exalted and get your island of plenty?”_

_“I do.” She tried to lie, really, but...It just wouldn’t come out. Something about this place. “I should have survived that blow to the leg. I got assistance from a healer, the blood was stopped up with cloth...”_

_“You were of weak mind. Naturally the attack took your life. Medicine is as much a matter of the mind as the body.” Natrix suspected that the Creator might have been lying then, but the Highest Angel didn’t have a face to give off any tells. Maybe she just wanted to believe this was bullshit._

_“As you seek to defy my commandments, you will act as the being of the heavens in death that you so often failed to attempt to be in life.”_

_“You’re making me a summoner? But Narration 203 states that “Leliel bound the sallalathi to her service, and thusly she turned from the Highest Angel.”_

_“I am the Highest Angel. I created law, but I need not follow it. I am above all law, even my own. The Seven Tomes are yours to follow. Or, as the case may be, manipulate and ignore. Now, Natrix. Kerubiel shall teach you.”_

_“Worthless god.”_

_“I have been insulted before.” The Highest Angel’s hands begun to glow with dancing flame. No. Flame was imperfect. Artificial by comparison. This was...It was not quite flame. Too perfect to be flame. Flame was this thing’s shadow. “I can inform your friends or loved ones of your current situation, if you so please. I’m dearly afraid you will not be able to contact them yourself when you return to the planet.”_

_“Tell Paladin Taylor. She’ll want to know what happened to her theological sparring partner. Tell Tyrrus. He’ll be disappointed that we can’t go on any more raids. Tell my mother I’m sorry for everything I did, tell my father the same, tell them both that I’m sorry a certain god never listened to them, tell them all that I promise I’ll never forget them.”_

_“How standard. I’ll do so, Paladin Natrix.” The holy flame from his hands started to flow through the air like a burning string, until it eventually shot straight through Natrix’s head like a burning lance._

_Whatever Paladin Natrix was, this new being felt almost none of it. Her thinking was centered around three immutable, physical laws. She physically was completely unable to lie, could not disobey an order from anyone above her in the celestial hierarchy, and was never to make an agreement she couldn’t keep._

  
_But there were contradictions to be exploited here, too, and rules to be bent._


	3. Something's Not Quite Fantasy Here

**BRIDGET MacASKILL:**

Two women sat on folding chairs on a relatively plain balcony. The first was a thin woman with impeccable makeup and a predilection for full kevlar armor. Her face was spotted with freckles, and her thin hand held a glass of wine. This was not Bridget MacAskill.

No, closer to the wooden table with the plastic plant and the suppressed Glock 18 machine pistol was the lawn chair of the actual Bridget MacAskill, a tall woman built of lean, hardened muscle. At her side on the floor was a sword over four feet long, a simple device with an unadorned crossguard and little in the way of flair. Excepting, of course, for its size.

“Dixie.” Bridget looked to her friend. The sky was overcast and the sunset had begun to paint the Georgia sky a burning orange. That was how things were, sometimes. Grey and burning. Bridget closed her eyes, briefly, and took a swig of Pepsi from a bottle. She didn’t drink. In contrast to Dixie’s armor that she hadn’t yet changed out of, she wore simply an Army t-shirt, khakis, and work boots.

“It’s Julianne.” Dixie responded, her Alabama drawl audible. Bridget didn’t seem to particularly care. Dixie continued drinking her wine. Bridget hoped she enjoyed that mentally inhibiting and tactically counterproductive stuff.

“Fine. Julianne. Can I bring up a concern with you?” Bridget asked. A child tied up with duct tape and gagged with a sock and heavy application of tape around her face sat in the corner of the balcony, making the sort of noises one would expect from a scared little girl.

“Bridget’s bringing up a concern. Wow. Stop the fuckin’ presses. Seriously, what is it? Did you finally realize that bringing a sword along with you to our raids is a stupid idea when we all have guns?”

“...I get my job done fine. That’s not the problem. The problem is Vanessa. She’s been going through the portal to see that vampire from wherever the fuck Vanessa goes. A lot. Enough that I’m starting to get worried. It’s been five years, I’ve tolerated it long enough. I’m done. We need to keep our operations in Cromwell at the front of our minds.”

Cromwell, Georgia. If it wasn’t the neo-Nazis, the mobsters, the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy, or the goddamn superhero vigilantes, it was whatever kind of serial killers and crazies CPD Operation Clean Sweep failed to purge in its racist, genocidal horror.

Bridget could remember the destructive post-Second Great Depression terror attacks and rebellions that Dixie still called the Second American Civil War vividly. The South hadn’t been stable since 2013, even with the military interventions. So dealing with magic wizard vampires on the other side of portals really wasn’t her interest. Honestly, she doubted sometimes it was worth her time. She would have stopped it, if it weren’t for the fact that the Paladin was through the portal, and that she couldn’t overrule the others.

“We need to stay open to all opportunities on the other side, Bridget. It’s simple. Vanessa Teague wants...I don’t want to try and get into her head, but I need to get food on Eric and I’s table, and you want to...I don’t know, remake this city in your own image or something. Cheers.” She raised her wine glass, which met Bridget’s plastic soda bottle.

“Opportunities on the other side. You make it sound like it’s the afterlife. It can’t be worse than here. Lich lords, vampires, shining knights, wizards...It’s like your Wednesday Night D&D with Agatha, Vanessa, and Vanessa’s psychotic kid. Speaking of which, why do you even play that game? It’s not exactly the sort of thing mass murderers would be expected to do, especially with Agatha.” She snarled the name “Agatha” as though she were describing a particularly vicious disease.

“Psychotic. Do you mean psychopathic? Oh, and you’re one to talk. Some of us are allowed to have hobbies.” Dixie shrugged and continued sipping her wine, turning to the taped-up child. She took the Glock 18 in her hands and aimed it at her. “Jenny Fenton. Don’t worry. Bridget’ll make sure that you see Daddy soon. At the Nazi rally, we’ll reunite a family.” Dixie laughed at her little joke, clearly a bit drunk.

Bridget watched Dixie. “Just get it done already. We can pitch the corpse off of the balcony as a show of force. Keep people from coming around here. If they do, we get more shows of force.” Her eyes narrowed and she heard Dixie pull the trigger of the wibbling gun three times. There was a sound like firecrackers being set off. When she looked back at where the child was, the girl now lacked a face, or, indeed, much of her head.

“You can’t have been that drunk.” Bridget remarked.

“No shit.” Dixie responded, standing up without much difficulty and walking through the screen door back into Dr. Vanessa Teague’s apartment. The apartment’s carpeting was short and a tasteful maroon, but the couches and one chair were plush, the living room chairs were known to swallow people without warning, the glass and metal table in the center had another fake plant, as well as a stack of magazines, ranging from surgical journals to DVDs.

These DVDs ranged from _The Most Dangerous Game_ (Vanessa Teague) to _The Dark Knight_ (Dixie) and, stashed between couch cushions in the tacit assumption that Bridget was very much not proud of her purchases (for their relation to _nerd things_ as much as their actual quality) and yet watched them frequently anyway, _The Dark Knight Rises, Suicide Squad, and Batman v. Superman_ , with the DVDs owned by Dixie and Dr. Teague stacked haphazardly on the table, displaying their glorious pride at being themselves.

Speaking of which, the TV and sound system itself was second only to what you might see at a movie theater, and the kitchen was clean, sterile, and completely unremarkable. It was slightly cramped, but, then again, they could afford to eat out from time to time. Given the very respectable wealth that they had for quite a few reasons, they often ordered in from the North Harbor District’s better food places that delivered. The North Harbor District and the Historic District were the only two districts of Cromwell that the battered post-early-2010s US Army could hold consistently, so things functioned largely normally there.

But, then, living there would mean they might be arrested for murder, armed robbery, arson, driving while intoxicated, larceny, public drunkenness (Thank you, Julianne DeWitt), high treason, conspiring against the United States (Thank you, Bridget MacAskill), insider trading (Thank you, Dr. Teague), and reckless driving. Well, probably most of those things. So, instead, their little gang resided downtown, which was controlled by the police, who usually didn’t attack people trying to deliver food.

The police were fine with ignoring all of these crimes, provided they got a slice of any revenue, and of course, they did. Cromwell, Georgia. Where the police encourage murder. One could argue that it was for a greater good, given the kind of people that Violet Crown tended to go after when not desperate, but, still. The Rogue was a superhero. Hell, even the Foxhunter, who was _excessive_ in her methods, and probably didn’t actually care about justice so much as hurting people, could be called a superhero.

Violet Crown weren’t superheroes. If anything, they were just some ambitious criminals with a name based off of “The City of the Violet Crown”, the old nickname for Austin, Texas, proud home city of group mentor Dr. Teague.

At any rate, Bridget found the incredibly soft and comfortable chair, pushed out the footrest, and closed her eyes. She tried to ignore the giant swirling portal in the middle of their living room. However, it was kind of hard, considering the loud microwave-oven hum the portal seemed to make. Fucking Lady Baines and her _Portal: 23 Birch Street, Cromwell, Georgia, United States, Earth_ spell.

Bridget wondered how long it took to develop that very specific little toy, or if Baines had to spend presumably a lot of time to make another completely different version of the spell if she wanted to create a portal to any other location. More importantly, she wondered what kind of game Lady Baines was playing. She had to be doing something with those Violet Crown loans and Earth things.

She didn’t read much of Dixie’s fantasy novels, but even she knew not to piss off an immortal vampire wizard.

**TYRRUS:**

Tyrrus was bored out of his godsdamned mind. The rolling hills had gone on forever, only to part way for much steeper hills, the new hills craggy, dirty, and dotted with asshole trees, who seemed to stand there as if to say “Fuck you, Tyrrus, we don’t have to worry about falling down this hill and getting our skulls broken, because we have roots.”

Stupid trees, making fun of him.

Finally, luckily, they made it to the top of one of the hills, which was high enough and close enough to Essin that they could just see it. The grey clouds of death that hung over Essin were in full view, as were the tall, blocky buildings and wide streets. Little dots that were probably those moving metal machines, well, moved around up and down those streets, and, well, it seemed as though they were almost there.

He continued walking back down the hill to the outskirts of Essinvale, the capital city of Essin (naturally, though the city was named after the old pre-Baines founder, Countess Essin, and the country that developed from the city took the name Essin). At this point, he was mostly looking at his feet to make sure that he didn’t trip over anything and fall down to his death. It could happen. Finally, after half an hour of steep downhill walking, he managed to reach the city itself. Given that he could, he looked around him.

There was a sound of hoofbeats.

Natrix was gone.

**NATRIX:**

Their job was to kill the First Vampire. That didn’t restrict her from killing everyone else in Essinvale. Kerubiel would make a fuss about it, but she was only following his orders. So she had split from the other two about halfway on the mountain, summoned a steed made of light for herself, and rode into Essinvale, opening up vortices behind her through which soldiers dressed in perfect armor with candle-light faces poured through, screaming war cries without mouthes in whatever strange language they used.

Her army charged behind her, at her word killing any of the clay men she saw, overturning the metal machines, breaking the devices, smashing lights, stabbing the few people they saw in their strange Essin garb, and she summoned toothed blobs of flesh, eyes, and fat from other vortices, which hit the ground and begun to eat away at buildings and devour the things and beings that could be crushed, chewed, or enveloped. As long as she stayed alive, this would have to draw Lady Baines out. That would be a simple fight.

**LADY BAINES:**

Lady Baines’ parlor was a bit too open. Nonetheless, she was quite fond of it. “Excuse me, Dr. Teague.” She nodded to the ragged-looking aged woman in the lab coat covered in stains of who knew what. Lady Baines stood up from her artfully carved wooden chair, featuring myths that this world never created. Heroes in hoplite’s armor against monsters. She then sighed, listening to what Scout Commander Reio said through crackling static, then she spoke. “This must be a joke. A summoner? Here? In Essinvale? Southern entrance, by the Wolf’s Back Hills. Understood. It’s probably just a vampire hunter from Angel Rock. I’ll take care of it. It’s happened before. Gather the lancers and skirmish gunners by her position.”

Dr. Teague nodded. “Yeah, you get to doing that. My friends are probably getting worried about me.” She walked through the portal in Lady Baines’ opulent parlor, going back to her apartment. Lady Baines then whispered to herself. “ _Greater Teleport”._

Within an instant, she appeared on a specific hilltop of the Wolf’s Back Hills, above Essinvale, able to watch the newcomer summoner break Lady Baines’ things very clearly. It was quite lucky that few people actually lived in Essin, and most of them were drafted in some form or another anyway. It was an Angel Rock summoner, though. This was going to be an annoying issue, and one not easily taken care of in one day.

“ _Greater Spear of Flame, Greater Spear of Flame, Greater Spear of Flame, Greater Banishment, Greater Mass Banishment.”_ She whispered.

With that, three beams of white-hot flame about as wide as a wagon wheel shot out from her hand, blasting the general area of the summoner, one immolating her, one nicking her, and one missing. At the same time, the summoner’s angelic steed was sent back to where it came, and the armies that the summoner assembled were simply sent with a “boop” noise to back where they came.

**NATRIX:**

Having one’s entire body more or less dunked into a vat of white-hot jelly is not fun. Obviously. Actually, it’s extremely painful. Natrix screamed, though it was more of a distorted hiss, given her physiology, and her skin and flesh was ripped from her bones, as those very bones begun to melt. What was briefly the leader of a great army of angels and monsters was reduced to an indistinguishable green and white mass.

Humans typically died when they were melted into oblivion. An Angel Rock summoner, however, was no human, and Kerubiel’s voice was still there in what remained of Natrix’s consciousness. The Highest Angel would not let go of one of his tools so easily.

**TAYLOR:**

Taylor and Tyrrus stood close together as they looked at the hill from which the _Spears of Flame_ originated. Taylor made a quick threat assessment. No more magical death was being flung from the hilltop. That meant that whoever was there (probably Lady Baines), had left. The bad news was that in place of one wizard, two large groups seemed to have been marshalled up to the hilltops. Frankly, Taylor was impressed with the speed that they were able to do so. It must have taken a lot of discipline.

The smaller group sat on a nearby hill, and the leader spoke through some kind of device, most likely magical, that looked a bit like a drinking horn. Consequently, his voice was clear and very loud. “You. Turn and leave before I get bored. Had a long day.”

“What a fucking tool.” Tyrrus said. “ _Orb of Flame”._ He tossed the Orb of Flame like a squelchball overhand, and hit, setting a bit of brush further down the hill the horsemen were on on fire.

“Well. You asked for it.” The leader said. “Kill ‘em!”

The horsemen on the hill that was beginning to burn quickly fanned out into small groups, riding towards the Tyrrus and Taylor. Tyrrus didn’t look scared, and Taylor had seen worse things in her dreams than these soldiers had probably seen in their nightmares. As they fanned out, though, the raised their weapons, which did not have any kind of blade. They made a loud cracking noise, though.

Upon closer inspection, Taylor noticed that what seemed to happen was that one of the horsemen would bring down a lever of some kind by their hand, do something with their first finger, the one closer to them (The other hand held the end of the device), and some kind of projectile would be shot.

Given that one can move a lever up and down quite quickly, that meant that they were being shot at very quickly. The horsemen had the good sense to stay out of her spatha range as they rode up and down the hills. Tyrrus swore. _“_ Shit! _Orb of Flame!”_ He threw one at a group, which easily dodged the projectile. “ _Spear of Flame!”_ That actually burnt up the head of a horse, which got one horseman onto the ground. Before that horseman got up and raised his weapon, Tyrrus casted another _Spear of Flame,_ and he was dead. One out of fifty.

“Lancers!” The leader of the horsemen yelled.

“You’re going to get us both killed through your lack of creativity!” Taylor said, Tyrrus sighing. “Fine. You want ‘creativity’? _Lightning Strike, Lightning Strike, Ligh-”_

It was at that point that the sound of hoofbeats, previously masked by the sound of the weapons of the horsemen and the horsemen’s hoofbeats, grew so strong as to show that it had to come from multiple sources. There were lighting strikes of acceptable accuracy, but Taylor turned behind her, and watched as the conical spear of a horseman coming from behind her, presumably one of the horsemen of the larger group, impaled Tyrrus. The horse didn’t slow down as the spear went straight through the thin man.

Tyrrus screamed as the blood and bits of intestines and organs fell from his stomach down his robe, and Taylor briefly felt something touch the small of her back. There was a sound of breaking bone.

The world went to blackness.

It was like a dream. She should have been surprised that she was alive, given that her abdomen had been penetrated straight through by a spear. She wasn’t. She didn’t even feel pain, at this point. Maybe she’d had such agony that it was all burnt out of her body, like candle oil being expended.

But she looked down, at the messy hole, at the gore that wasn’t there. The hole was gone. Sewn up. Like fabric. She did not lay in a comfortable bed, though. She wasn’t greeted by an apprentice wizard, hot iron, or acid. She instead found herself hung by many sharp wires which dug into her skin like claws, her arms and legs hanging limp, her armor, gambeson, and trousers clearly removed. The cold in whatever room this was bathed her entire body. On the ground, she saw a puddle of blood and juices.

This told her of her situation, and so she grit her teeth, tearing up a bit at the pain. She forced her neck to turn to the left, right, and forward, to get an idea of where she was. She was in what looked like a very pristine white painted cellar. Three other beings were there. Two were alive. One was Lady Baines, the worthless half-alive thing, then a woman in a white coat covered in red and brown stains, with a metal contraption around her eyes that made it appear that her eyes were mirrors. Dr. Teague. She held a metal tank attached to some kind of metal tube with a valve, and Taylor could see the same white medical equipment she knew too well.

Finally, there was Tyrrus himself, who was hung next to her. Unlike the other three people in the room, Tyrrus’ neck was mostly carved out. It was haphazard. Pointed tooth-marks showed chewing, so much that the throat was cut out completely. Now it was nothing but empty air, bone, and bloody muscle. His eyes were closed. She prayed to the Highest Angel for strength and guidance. She considered praying for Tyrrus, but the snake didn’t really deserve it.

“Oh, she wakes up.” The doctor said, with some amusement. She must have been approaching her fiftieth year of life or thereabouts, by appearance. “Well, I’m glad that you and I got to be reunited. Paladin Taylor, right? Yeah, Lizzie reminded me of you. I almost forgot that one test subject of Tyrrus’. It was hilarious watching Lizzie rip out his throat. What a spoiled fucking dick. He cried, too. He cried, and moaned, and begged for her to stop. He tried to tell her that she taught him everything, that he had a quest, that he had a duty, a divine mission. Then he just started screaming. Almost made me want to become a vampire, but, well, I couldn’t live on blood.”

Now, now it seemed like she should ask an obvious question or two. All in the name of gathering information, and if any time required information, it was now. “Then why did you..heal...me? I’m not sure what you did, but I don’t feel the pain of being impaled anymore. Tyrrus and I came to kill you, and clearly you knew that, if you attacked us.”

Lady Baines shrugged. “Dr. Teague’s friend thought that you might be a fighter. She wanted to keep you around. Recruit you. I thought it would be more efficient to just shoot you in the head, as did Tyrrus-”

“Tyrrus?”

Dr. Teague laughed a bit at that. It was kind of a scoff, actually. “Oh, yeah. I saved him before I killed him. Lady Baines told him that he could choose for either you or him to die.  As a test of loyalty. Without hesitation, he chose you.”

“I concluded that someone so willing to kill someone they were close to was probably not worth keeping around. So since he chose you, I had a small meal.” Lady Baines nodded. “At any rate, I suggested killing you, as did Tyrrus, but Violet Crown, that would be Dixie, Dr. Teague, and Bridget, the one who respects you, objected.”

“I will not be able to fight her if I’m hung from the ceiling.” Taylor said. “I would like to be able to bite off your ear and chew at your neck again. The fact that you can regenerate is frustrating. But can your friends regenerate?” Taylor laughed bitterly, hoping to intimidate them. She knew it was absurd, but if she were to die here...

The sound of a knocking at a new wooden door was audible, a loud thwapping noise, along with the yelling of some woman with a guttural voice. “The door is locked. Is Paladin Taylor able to spar?”

Lady Baines started to walk up the stairs, her incredibly poofy dress covering her steps as she walked. “No. She isn’t. Dr. Teague just brought her back from near-certain death. She’ll need a month, at the very least. I’m no doctor, a wizard. That means that I don’t have any medical skill other than _Cure Disease,_ and this is not a disease.”

Taylor yelled as loudly as she could. “I’m ready to fight. Give me my sword and get me my armor. If I win, can I go free?”

The guttural voice responded. “Yeah. Of course you get to go free. It’s just that I think you and I have a lot in common. Enough that we might be able to work together for the common good. It’s not like you’ve got much else. Tyrrus sold you out, the summoner who is with you has disappeared, and if you do find her, I doubt she’ll turn on you for doing what you had to. You could go home, but do you want to do what’s right, or do you want to do what’s according to the colony’s vision of who you’re supposed to be?”

“Show me proof that he betrayed me, and prove to me that you are worth anything, and I will consider your option, whatever it is.” Taylor growled, snarling at the door. “Baines. Get the door open.” Lady Baines sighed and stepped back after undoing the quite complex lock, and a woman with a sword that was far too long and heavy-looking to exist followed her down. “We have it recorded.”

The new woman, Bridget, drew a rectangular device from her trouser pocket, and begun to move her finger around on it, before showing Bridget that side. Sure enough, there was a “healed” Tyrrus hanging from the ceiling in the reflection.

**TYRRUS:**

_Tyrrus felt the hooks that bound him so loosely to the ceiling dig into his skin, and he saw the three of them in front of him, his head at eye level to the squat Lady Baines. He looked to his side and saw Taylor, equally demeaned as he was, asleep. He had seen Dr. Teague put her under anesthesia. Finally, the normal Violet Crown one stood there, holding up her stupid black rectangle. He didn’t know what that meant. It probably wasn’t good._

_“Look, I didn’t...” The pain from the hooks was impossible to ignore, and the fear of being killed even more so. “Sphere of Flame, Sphere of Flame...” And yet, a sphere of flame about the size of a small hut did not manifest. “Dammit. Gods dammit! An Area of Null Magic! How did you even learn that stupid fucking spell?”_

_“Sorry. I’m afraid you’ll never know. Unless, of course, you play a bit of a game of mine. As you were once my apprentice and thus know how little you are to me, I’m sure you’ll be willing to play. I am quite bored, sitting around here, doing nothing, masturbating, realizing for the 4702th time that I can’t actually masturbate with a well-preserved corpse for a body... So this really makes things more fun.”_

_Tyrrus decided to ignore that comment on the futility of vampire masturbation, for the sake of his own life. “Uh, yeah...Sure. What do you want to do? Dear the gods, please make it simple.” Tyrrus started to tear up as the pain enveloped his body, the lack of robes making the cold of the cellar much worse._

_The fucking doctor seemed very excited for some reason, and whispered something to the normal one. At least the two of them could relate, the few times they’d talked. She wanted to set everything right in her city by taking control of it, he wanted to make the point that magic itself wasn’t a sign of being good by becoming the most evil wizard in history...They both got the whole “greater good” thing._

_“It is simple, don’t worry. All you need to do is make a choice. You and Taylor are both alive.” The fucking doctor held her blowtorch and set it alight with a creaking noise. “That is going to change. Either you die, or Taylor dies. The choice is yours.” He didn’t think about it too hard. She he’d only known for a few years, and she was a paladin. He was...himself. “Dear gods, please, just kill her!” At that, the doctor actually turned her device off, put it back on the ground, and Lady Baines ran with vampiric speed over a very short distance. She pushed his neck to the side and she sank her fangs into it. He screamed. “Oh, dear gods, I have my job, if I don’t do it nobody will, you trained me-”_

  
_She pulled her head down an inch with her teeth in his neck, leaving two cutting scars. “Just please stop! Whatever you want, I can give it to you! I just need to live!” Then she actually bit down, carving out a massive chunk of flesh. He screamed, though the noise was muffled by the blood collecting inside of what was once his neck. It was only until she got to his voice box with her chomping that he stopped screaming. She was quick, but it was the speed of a chainsaw to the neck more than a knife across the jugular._


	4. Hunter and Hunted

**DIXIE:**

That stupid portal was getting really fucking annoying. Vanessa was out in Essin with the vampire, and now Bridget had gone across worlds as well. Not to mention the fact that it made that stupid humming noise that she suspected that she’d hear in her mind for the rest of her life. She sat on her lawn chair on the balcony, as far away from that stupid portal as possible, and continued sipping her wine, listening to the sound of gunshots, yelling, and traffic ( the last mostly from the military districts). She thought she heard a soft clanking sound, but thought nothing of it.

The corpse to her side reminded her that she would have to do something about that mess, so with a loud grunt she heaved the small body over the railing, listening to it hit the concrete below satisfyingly. That was one of the benefits of killing children. They were lighter. As for the blood and brains, some combination of hydrogen peroxide, Goo-B-Gone, paper towels and ammonia typically did the trick (it helped that the balcony had a wood floor instead of carpet), though it left the balcony smelling more than a little disgusting.

So she entered the living room, went to the tiny kitchen, found the necessary bottles and the paper towels, and returned to the balcony to deal with the mess. It occurred to her that while Vanessa and Bridget were having fantasy adventures or whatever, she was stuck at home cleaning up. She did prefer to have a balcony that didn’t look like a serial killer’s Jackson Pollock, though, and they couldn’t do enjoyable things all the time.

She heard another sound of clanking, though this one was much larger, and then felt an arm covered in an old brown leather glove and a ragged tan and brown sleeve with obvious seams repaired with black thread wrap quickly around her neck. Dixie felt one of the hands drop, and she tried to struggle, but a thin capsule made of plastic was squeezed into her face, and she begun to inhale some kind of yellow mist, choking, but she quickly froze up, and the other person bound her hands with what looked like a specialized form of handcuffs. She then felt the other put some kind of harness around her legs, do...something, and pitch her off of the balcony.

She felt all of this. She wanted to yell, or, more accurately, murder this previously-invisible motherfucker for having the balls to come up to her balcony, harness her, and idly throw her a foot or two off of a balcony, but, frankly, her body’s motion had shut down, even the coughing stopping. Her breathing slowed, and when the free fall ended, she felt herself being lowered twenty stories down, looking at the ground.

A street in disrepair, human beings the size of small pieces of candy or something, cars that looked, to use a bit of a cliché, like toys, it was enough to induce a sense of vertigo, but the gas seemed to prevent that. She tried to close her eyes, and found, luckily, that it was not impossible to resist the gas’ effects. Merely very, very hard. So she entered a comforting world of blackness and felt her body hit the pavement from a non-lethal one foot drop (although it certainly hurt).

When she lay on the ground, unable to move her own body except for the smallest parts, she opened her eyes to see a person in some kind of tan and rocky-grey desert hunter’s or military camouflage outfit (Probably hunter’s, the US hadn’t been involved in a desert war since the 90s). The least notable change was a pair of knee-high leather boots in spectacularly, unimaginably poor condition, but the others were less normal. She wore some kind of poncho made of old and ragged cloth, spotted with holes, a hood that looked more like a bag with protrusions in the vaguest shape of a fox’s ears, and, covering her face completely, a brown gas mask with wide eye lenses that had been made to be mirrored, obscuring her eyes completely. A bandolier of some sort crossed her chest and met with some kind of fucking utility belt, the former visibly holding several capsules of varying colors, marked with quick and hasty paint strokes. If Dixie had her suspicions before, this clinched her guesses as to who this person was.

The Foxhunter lept from the outside of one balcony to the other, climbing deftly and patiently, at the bottom of each balcony pushing off just enough so that she could avoid danger while still grabbing the balcony below it. She seemed like she might be using some kind of gadget, but, frankly, Dixie couldn’t tell. The Foxhunter’s little method of travel was higher than many circus acts. About two minutes later, she deftly landed from the outside of the second floor balcony she was clinging to, and then approached Dixie, taking off the harness, leaving it by the side of the road, grabbing her by one hand and dragging her off to a off-green pickup with the license plate cut off.

She felt herself hastily tossed into the back of the pickup, and Dixie felt the Foxhunter restrain both of her limbs with zip ties instead of the previous setup. Then the Foxhunter left the back of the pickup, closed the door, and got into the driver’s seat, beginning to drive away. 

After about ten minutes in which Dixie was bored more than anything, she noticed that the scenery had changed. In the police-held districts, there were typically graffiti, gunshots, signs of disrepair, that sort of thing. They had crossed a line, geographically speaking. The buildings were reasonably well-kept, she could only faintly hear gunshots, and there were soldiers on every other street corner. So they had to be in the Historic District. Which meant that whoever the Foxhunter was, she was on good terms with the local authorities.

That could mean she was being brought to be arrested for her crimes.

That could mean she was going to get killed, and nobody would care.

The truck stopped, eventually, not in the Historic district, but in an ancient-looking clearing. It moved through a Roman arch, and when it stopped, Dixie took in the dripping moss which hung from the thick tree branches. She didn’t have much time to take this in, however, as she heard the Foxhunter crawl into the back of the truck and slam another plastic capsule in her face, which compressed and released another cloud of mist. She coughed some more, and found that she could move her body. 

Not that the zip-ties were going to let her do much of it. Nonetheless, she flopped onto her back and let the Foxhunter hastily pull her off of the truck bed and onto her feet. Son of a bitch. “Move.” The Foxhunter commanded, and she started to shuffle towards the massive pseudo-Roman house that was the Appleby plantation, once Vanessa’s, then the government’s, then, during the anarchy, uninhabited.

“The fucking plantation? You’ve brought me here? Why the plantation?” Dixie said, though the Foxhunter seemed to ignore her. Most likely, she just found this a convenient hidden base for her operations, Dixie supposed. She shuffled along through the dust and the dirt, until she followed the Foxhunter into the living room. She would go on about the living room, about the spacious quarters, antique furniture, spiral staircases (plural), and all of that, but, frankly, she wasn’t that kind of person. She was more focused on how she would get out of this one.

The Foxhunter took her by the back of the neck and dragged her through a door to the left, turning a brass doorknob on a mahogany door, to a room that was, well...More what Dixie expected. The Foxhunter threw Dixie at the ground with one hand just after Dixie realized that the room was lined with jars full of human body parts soaking in fluid, or cleaned and bleached bone sitting on shelves. The one exception was a clean black machete lying against a corner.

“This was once a library, Julianne. I disliked having to get rid of it. I used to read here, with my father. He taught me about architecture, science, philosophy...I’ve forgotten most of it.” The Foxhunter sighed. “He was a good man, Emil Wedekind. That’s pronounced as ‘Vedekind’. He was German.”

Dixie snarled, the pain ringing in her head, as the Foxhunter took her by the upper arm and propped her against the wall, the light from the Venetian blinds providing little source of light compared to the bright ceiling light. “Wedekind, this house. So you couldn’t stop with D&D and comic books, could you, Lena Wedekind-Teague?”

The Foxhunter removed the hood with the mask, and underneath was a ragged young woman with long corn-blonde hair that was absolutely everywhere, a long scar across her nose, and eyes sunken in. She bit her lip, and then grabbed the machete from the corner. “Tell me, Dixie. Is Batman the mask, or is Bruce Wayne the mask?"

“Well, it depends on the writer.” Dixie shrugged. So this was how she bit it. In a plantation house, at the hands of the fucking seventh-level Lawful Good Fighter. “Sometimes Bruce Wayne’s the real one, a billionaire playboy guy, and sometimes Batman’s the real one, a ruthless vigilante, and Bruce Wayne’s nothing more than a mask. Sometimes it’s not that clear. What, you think you’re Batman? Terror and the night?”

“Of course not. I’m a hunter. Rule one: I can only go after people who commit serious crimes. Rule two: I must take a trophy from the kill and keep it here, to respect the fallen. Rule three: Things have gotten so bad that the Foxhunter must be completely amoral, for good cannot do what must be done and evil is...well...evil. So I hunt the Wild Hunt, and nothing else. You are the most interesting quarry to date, and so I hoped to give you a proper farewell.”

“But why me? From what I can tell you’re a serial killer who wants to be Batman. I’m just a criminal. Besides, the thing about Batman? When he’s depicted as Bruce Wayne first, we get Justice League Batman. He works with the group, is kind of grumpy and cynical, but is at heart a good guy. Batman first is what you’ve gone past. Psychotic, obsessed, and, in your case, unaware that I sent a note to your mom saying that I rolled sleight of hand to steal all of your fucking gold pieces.”

“You shouldn’t be this flippant, Julianne. I’m going to kill you and potentially taxidermy your head, depending on my mood. Possibly mount it on the wall. The walls without shelves by them are quite barren. Then you will be able to live on in some sense. Besides, I’m giving you one final conversation. That’s more than you did for any of your victims.”

“You know what? Fine. I’m a bad person, but I didn’t start out that way. I grew up in Assfuck, Alabama, dealt with shitty, passive-aggressive, controlling as fuck parents, then the war broke out, the Yankees hit Birmingham, and when the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy told me that I needed to go out and fight for my freedom, since I was good with a rifle despite having a cooter, and, more importantly Assfuck didn’t have many men or boys no more since they kept dying, I damn well picked up a varmint rifle and did what I had to do. Then the war turned to shit and a lot of people died. I went home, found that my family had been killed as Sons and Daughters by the Army, the suicide bombings started... So I fled to fucking Georgia. Next state over, thought like an idiot I could flee North by hiding in the slightly different chaos there until I found a way out. But then I met your mom on a subway. Met a friend there, too, Bridget. Her and I got along, Vanessa raised us like a goddamn mother, she liked us, and in the end we had to cope with the new world somehow. You’ve seen Cromwell. Bridget decided she was going to fix everything by taking it over, you apparently became completely insane, and I turned to crime to keep me, and later my family, eating. But I couldn’t stop, and so here we are. So that’s why I’m a bad person.”

At that, Lena actually lowered the machete a bit for a second, her face contorting into something resembling compassion, before glaring at Dixie. “This is a lie. You want me to spare your life, to disobey the Wild Hunt, so you’re spinning this sob story. The idea of Dr. Teague treating anyone like a decent mother is beyond me. I once spent a month with half of my shoulder covered in second-degree burns from that blowtorch. When she wasn’t completely ignoring me she was hurting me to get me to ignore her, or for fun.”

“Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, Vanessa just didn’t like you? You were the kid of the smarmy fuck she married like an idiot in college, and she wasn’t necessarily the nicest person? Oh, and she probably saw in you Adalwolfa. Lena, just realize this. Maybe she just wanted different daughters than what she got, and when she found them, she found them.”

“Insult my aunt’s name again. Adalwolfa was the best thing the Wedekinds ever produced, and certainly the best thing to be related by marriage to Dr. Teague. To show respect to you for the hunt, I’ll give you a choice. Do you want me to take a finger from you, a hand, an eyeball, or your head? I can engrave your name on a stand, the first three can be labeled pretty easily. I’ll still kill you, but this is just a matter of the hunt.”

“How about you cut off my hand so I can flip you off forever? Oh, and I want to just say something. All this time, you’ve been talking about how this “Wild Hunt” is what you need to do. How it’s all that matters. But here you are, murdering people, and Batman never had to kill anyone. He just punched a lot of people.”

“Batman isn’t real, Julianne. He’s a fictional character.” Lena said, grabbing Dixie’s zip-tied right wrist with one hand and ruthlessly hacking away at it with the machete, each strike harder and harder, chipping bone, listening to the screaming of her victim with some joy considering their conversation, the blood and flesh mixing with the cries and curses of her victim. The tight lavender-gloved hand barely hanging on, the bone mostly chopped through through sheer power of repetition, blood covering the leg of her body armor and the purple carpet below her, Dixie moved her wrists to catch the final chop, and it cut through the zip-tie. It also carved out a chunk of skin, which felt as horrible as that sounds, but in rage, she threw a punch directly at Lena’s face, giving her a bloody nose. She then grabbed the blade of the machete, drawing even more blood, and twisted it out of the stunned Lena’s hand, chopping at Lena’s chest.

“...Oh my god. She’s seen anything related to any superhero who doesn’t have the supernatural power to stop bullets, and she goes for my costume. It’s armored. You are exceedingly stupid. May your memory be less bothersome than you.” She kicked Dixie in the side, grabbed her body, and kneed her in the stomach with an armored kneecap. Normally, that would knock out the breath in one’s body, and cause immense pain. It did the first thing, but she was already about to black out, so the pain wasn’t an issue. Lena raised her machete to intercept Dixie’s very much unarmored neck, and then, at that point, something horrible happened.

A portal opened up in the room, a swirling entity that sounded vaguely like a microwave, and out from it came a being with goat horns and angel wings, one arm fatty and fleshy and the other made of articulated wood. Her chest was carved with crude, tribal symbols, and branded with writing in a language that had never existed on Earth. Underneath all of this, a faint glow of blue showing bones underneath clearly could be seen, and her skull was completely exposed. She walked into the trophy room, followed by scorpion-men, people with water hanging from their skulls instead of jaws, people covered in tiny tentacles dripping with...something, and all other things. Dixie heard many broken voices. “Would you like to make a deal?”

She hastily coughed out her response. “Yes, thank god, please...”

“I was not talking to you. I was talking to the she-wolf’s pup. Bleed.” As the monster spoke, Lena chuckled and slashed Dixie’s throat.

**TAYLOR:**

Fuck. Essin. Period. Period between those two words. Fuck. Essin. Taylor fought the pain burning in her abdomen like boiling water as she stood in what was probably a field at some distant point in the past, out behind Lady Baines’ manor. She stood there in her armor. She felt whole. She felt as though she’d been given back her skin. Now she wore her beautiful, dirty, muddy, probably freezing cold mail and tabard thankfully over her gambeson. By the back door were Lady Baines and Dr. Teague, Teague’s blast stick resting against the wall.

The field she stood on was grey, her leather boots sinking slightly into the soaked ground. What looked like the tiniest hints of some kind of life in the form of pointed saplings poking through the ground were visible, but that was it. For a place drenched in rain, it was dead as the grave. No pun intended. Maybe it was because Lady Baines enjoyed testing her magic out behind the house. Maybe it was simply because of the death clouds up there. That was all she knew. That they were called death clouds. They had not killed her yet.

Sixteen paces away was that other woman. Bridget. Strange name. Almost sounded Descoran. The other woman wore the same strange trousers and short-sleeved tunic as before, and carried that absurd sword. She yelled across the field. “Paladin Taylor. Draw your sword.” Taylor drew her spatha, thankful that at least this was going to be close to on her terms, unlike a certain other fight with blast sticks and massive, sharp spears. 

She looked at the much taller woman sixteen paces away and sized up her odds. She was obviously quite tall, and seemed to believe that she would like to recruit Taylor or test herself her. That meant that she might not put her full energy into going after Taylor, at least at first, in hopes of seeing what Taylor could do. A paladin’s honor is an interesting thing, but no one followed the Ten Tomes absolutely to the letter. She ran at Bridget and ignored the chest pain, closing distance as quickly as she could.

The other woman slashed her sword quickly in a motion that was not unlike cracking a whip, once Taylor got one and a half paces or so to Bridget, and the blade in the other woman’s hand swept down, Taylor managing to narrowly dodge it and stab Bridget in the chest. Well, she thought she did. Instead, her blade hit nothing but the air and out of the corner of her eye she saw her target.

So she lunged. It should be noted that the idea of a greatsword is actually one originating in the late Middle Ages. To Taylor, it was as modern as the blast sticks. One of the advantages of using a short, primitive sword over the modern marvel of swordcrafting that Bridget held was that she could actually stab, and so she did, jamming her blade into Bridget’s gut, and twisting it with both hands. The other woman tried to raise her sword, but she wasn’t really doing much of anything.

As Bridget screamed and tried to fight, only causing the moving sword inside of her to rip and slash at her more, Teague tossed her blast stick to Bridget, which had some kind of black band wrapped around the back of it. The band had five thick loops sewn into it, and shining, pointed cylinder-cones made of what looked like brass had been stuck through.

Bridget finally managed to kick Taylor away, and the paladin reeled back for a second. Bridget raised the blast stick, and Taylor thought it was her end. She made a quick peace with the Highest Angel, but, to her surprise, Bridget took the cylinder-cones out of the loops, threw them more or less at Taylor, and tossed the empty blast stick away from her. Then, she raised her blade.

Taylor, however, could guess at the destructive power of the blast sticks, and between risking that massive sword cleaving through her neck or removing a limb and running to the blast stick, she picked the latter. She ran, and quickly took in what this thing was. It didn’t have the lever that the skirmishers’ blast sticks had, instead having a sort of large bolt on the top, some kind of black thing with glass panes inside, and a hole in the side, by the back, where something would presumably go in to shoot whatever these things shot. She recognized the small metal pulling bit on the bottom, though.

Silently thanking Bridget for her sense of honor, she found one of the metal cylinder-cones, inserted it into the blast stick, and put it against her shoulder the way the skirmishers did, and prayed for guidance. Quite literally. She drew back the bolt, pushed it back in and down, as felt natural enough, and pulled the small metal pulling bit, the loud bang and kicking of the blast stick surprising the paladin a bit. However, the already bleeding Bridget now had a hole in the chest, and she dropped her sword.

So, Taylor finished the job. She searched around for another one of those cylinder-cones, found two close-ish to each other, put them both in the blast stick, and approached Bridget for a better shot, unloading both with the same motions as before into her bleeding mess of a stomach. Now it was a grotesque display, nothing less. She put down the blast stick, tuned out the sound of Bridget’s screaming, cursing, and bitter oaths, and slashed her jugular with her spatha. 


	5. Alpha Wolf

**ADALWOLFA WEDEKIND:**

_You didn’t become known as the Alpha Wolf of Austin as a cop without doing a lot of good. You didn’t get people calling your right hand man the Beta, calling the cops who fucked up and had to be isolated or dealt with Omegas, without doing a hell of a lot of good. In contrast to a certain Georgia penthouse, Police Chief Adalwolfa Wedekind’s apartment was old, it was rotten, it smelled like long-dead food, and she probably would have been able to buy a better one years ago if the Second Great Depression hadn’t hit._

_She was what, forty-three at this point? Forty-four? She wasn’t counting. Outside, through the tiny window in the eggshell wall, she saw the night sky clearly. She sighed to herself, and checked what was on TV. Yankee news, some British sitcoms and California crap... Another drink wouldn’t hurt. This was how it always was when she had free time._

_Even for the Alpha Wolf, the woman who’d made sure that Austin didn’t end up like national tragedy Cromwell, who’d had some cops shot for abusing power and who’d taken it on herself to judge the guilty and innocent far before the courts could in some cases...Maybe a lot of cases....Maybe she didn’t trust those puppets of the Yankee and Dixie business fucks who started this damn war....But even for her, the fact remained. Things weren’t going to get any better._

_She entered her sickly kitchen and looked for some beer. Nothing special. Corner store beer. She reached into her long coat, threw her forties-detective hat against a wall without thinking about it, and got out her bottle opener, popping the top of the shit beer clean off. In a good world, she’d be drinking craft beer. This was Austin, and she was the chief of police. Nonetheless, she started to sip her beer._

_She went back to her old chair to flip through the channels on her German TV, which in and of itself was a sort of taunt, in her eyes. Look at her. Managing the police in a city on the brink (as opposed to the city on the news every damned night, which had lept off the brink years ago) in the US. She should have stayed in Germany, so many years ago. But no. Land of opportunity._

_She snorted at that thought, and found a reality TV show about some douchebags in New York and their incredibly excessive yet childish lives. Good enough. She begun to sip her beer, and relaxed as best she could in the austere chair. Then, naturally, there was a knock at the door. “Who is it?” She yelled._

_“It’s Dr. Teague. I want to talk about the kid.”_

_Adalwolfa reached into her massive coat’s left pocket and drew her personal cell phone, calling Captain Roarke, also known as the “Beta”. “Roarke, it’s Wedekind. Dr. Teague is just outside my apartment. Send backup ASAP and a SWAT team, alright?” At Roarke’s response, Adalwolfa nodded and walked up to the door, opening it up._

_Sure enough, there was the infamous Dr. Teague, holding a can of gasoline, and her two surrogate children, the stick with the P90 submachine gun and the soldierly-looking one with the machine pistol and sword. The thin one aimed and quickly blew out both of Adalwolfa’s knees. She grit her teeth and fell to the ground haphazardly._

_Teague begun to cover the very much alive Adalwolfa in the noxious fluid, before drawing from that messy lab coat of hers a matchbook labeled “Sierra Madre Cigarettes”, striking a match, and speaking to the soldierly one. Bridget MacAskill. “Bridget, if I know her we have backup soon. I’d like to see her burn but we don’t have the time. Hit the fire alarm, get any of the civvies out of the way, and lead the way out. Dixie, cover Bridget and make sure she doesn’t use that fucking useless sword too often. You need to lend her some body armor sometime. Just keep Adalwolfa down first.”_

_Teague flicked a lit match through the air, which twisted one, two, three, four times, before landing on Adalwolfa’s arm. More gunshots were heard as Dixie pounded both of Adalwolfa’s legs into nothing with five shots, and the three of them started to leave. Literally and metaphorically, Adalwolfa’s world was on fire, and through the suffering, the choking and coughing on the smoke, the sensation of her entire body and skin burning up slowly like a fucking candle, she prayed to the god she’d never believed in that Teague didn’t turn dear, sweet, moral, good, kind Lena into one of her pets. She couldn’t die. Not now. She had to guide her._

_She was found as a charred corpse an hour later by the SWAT team she’d requested._

**HAWK PALADIN CORWIN:**

A thin man in no armor but soft leather, which covered his entire body, save for a head wrapped in cloth, stood on a rainy hilltop on one of the closest hills to the Essin in the Wolf’s Back Hills. He peered at the abomination onto the Highest Angel that was Essin. Death clouds, buildings that had the audacity to resemble bits of a castle, machines that drove themselves... Others might be amazed. Not him. The black symbols of open eyes and writing in the Sacred Script that were painted onto his armor gave him strength as he looked at the land of horrors. The bow on his back and quiver weighed a bit.

In truth, Hawk Paladin Corwin knew more about Essin than any other Angel Rock colonist, and probably more than most Essinmen. Years ago, as the vile Immortal Lord Lady Baines had been experimenting with her portals, he had snuck into one in her backyard, intrigued by the humming sound. He’d stepped through and found himself on a flat plain much like that which he was used to. The houses were odd and roofed with something he couldn’t quite place, but they were clearly houses. The Initiate Paladin had seen the moving machines as well, though they were far less crude than what Lady Baines had assembled, and many people, dressed in colorful tunics.

_Initiate Corwin stood on some solid grey road by a line of brick houses, dressed in the tabard and chain an initiate typically wore. He had no spatha. Not yet. Surrounding him were many people in short-sleeved tunics of blue and red, some brandishing a flag of some kind with a blue sideways cross dotted with stars. Most seemed to be shuffling away, towards some unknown objective. One of these strange people pointed a black device at Corwin. “You. Weirdo. You’re not the vampire, are ya?”_

_“Do you mean Lady Baines, sir?” Corwin asked, quite innocently. “...No. I’m not her. I’m a Brother-Initiate from Angel Rock. A Paladin in training. I’m here out of more or less an accident.” He tried to seem as unthreatening as possible, but the strange man with a red shirt and shaved head didn’t lower what he guessed was a weapon. “Mind if I ask what you’re holding?”_

_“This? This is an AR-15. It’s a gun. You point it at things and pull the trigger, then they die. We’re going to war. You got a sword or something, freak?” A gun. Well, it certainly sounded potent enough. All the more reason to avoid antagonizing these people. A good half of them clearly had devices which looked vaguely like the “AR-15”, though many were much smaller._

_“No, sir. I’m afraid I haven’t earned the right to carry a sword yet.” He said, and the man made a vaguely threatening gesture with the gun. The man with the shaved head responded as a white thing that sounded like a dragon (though recently many had begun to believe, and probably rightfully so, that dragons were not real) flew overhead, causing a loud whooshing noise. “Fuck off.”_

_“Yes, yes, of course. I fully understand. I’ll leave at once. Last question, though? What is that thing, how can it fly, and why is it so loud? Also, where am I?” He said, the man growling a bit before the man responded. “That’s an airplane, it carries people around the world, I don’t know how it flies, but it’s got these fan things that are really goddamn loud that help it fly, and you’re in Cassidy, Tennessee. In America. We’re going to go and make Nashville’s government pay for arresting Sons and Daughters. Just fuck off already. We got shit to do.” Brother-Initiate Corwin ran back through the humming portal._

Tennessee. What a strange place. However, he had seen the barest fraction of what he assumed Tennessee had to offer. It had to be where Lady Baines obtained all of the strange things that could be found in her nation. Things he’d later learn were called clocks, lever-action rifles, hand grenades, cocaine, telephone lines, cars, battle tanks, chlorine gas... Essin was his to scout out and watch.

He hadn’t told anyone. He’d gone on his scouting missions to Essin, of course, just as Hawk Paladin Carpenter went on scouting missions to Redspire, Hawk Paladin Rook went on scouting missions to Dassen, Hawk Paladin Keyes went on missions to the Null Islands, Hawk Paladin Bertram used to scout out Lea, and absolutely nobody went to scout out the Otherworld. He hadn’t told anyone, though.

Why should he? If Angel Rock knew just how powerful Essin had gotten, even without the magical power that they knew Lady Baines had, he had no idea what that could do. They already were utterly terrified of Otherworld, and for good reason. The few survivors who returned from scouting there had to be killed for what monsters they had been turned into. One actually made a deal with the First Summoner. Otherworld was on the other side of the continent, though. Essin, however, was right next door. Either Essin didn’t attack Angel Rock, in which case not telling them would work out fine, or they did attack, in which case the magical fury of Lady Baines and the devices he’d seen and learned about (via interrogating the humans she used to keep everything fixed and manage the whole system of importing from Tennessee, mostly), would swiftly overrun Angel Rock anyway, and there was nothing that he could do about it.

He would like to hope that the Highest Angel could step in and save them, but he was a good Paladin, and he knew Passage 2, “The Highest Angel is creation and creation alone, he can not destroy that which is created”, Passage 15, “The Highest Angel is no petty god, he does not raise the sword that his children may live”, and Passage 46 “All things must come to an end, that is not the right of any god to postpone, nor to bring about.”

Well, that was reassuring.

**ADALWOLFA WEDEKIND:**

_Two women, both in their mid thirties, sat on a plush couch in the upscale Austin apartment owned by Dr. Vanessa Teague, MD. The first wore a surprisingly clean white dress, low heels, and had her hair in something of an updo, with small, pearly-white earrings. This was Dr. Teague when she wanted to make an impression._

_The other woman, Officer Adalwolfa Wedekind (pronounced ‘Vedekind’) was out of uniform, in a plain white blouse and tan pants. She wore no makeup. “You’re overdressed, Teague.” By Teague’s side, standing, were her two adopted children in all but name, Julianne DeWitt, age 15, and Bridget MacAskill, age 17. The former had started to toy with the actual military dog tags she got from who knew where, and the latter stood perfectly still at attention._

_“I just wanted to show you that I don’t always walk around looking like Frankenstein. The scientist. The monster could also be called Frankenstein, due to inheriting...That’s beside the point.”_

_Officer Wedekind glared, and the small fourteen-year-old with the long blonde hair and the age-inappropriate Dark Knight Returns graphic novel sat next to her. This was Lena Wedekind-Teague. She seemed a bit scared of the other two children, considering the way that Julianne looked at Lena like a tiger looking at prey. Lena especially seemed afraid of Dr. Teague, her hand on Adalwolfa’s leg. “You know why I brought you here. I don’t want you to do anything to Lena. She’s not like your street rats.”_

_Julianne interrupted, her tone indignant. “Street rats? What the hell makes you think that-” Bridget quietly put a hand on her shoulder, and Julianne’s objection fell into empty air._

_“She can believe what she likes. It doesn’t change reality, Dixie.” Bridget smiled in a manner that might actually be described as “warm”, and Adalwolfa Wedekind found herself pleasantly surprised at the humanity in the lackeys Lena’s mother was raising. Not that it meant much._

_Teague sighed melodramatically. “Look, what I do to or for Lena is my business. If I pay her way through art school, that’s my business. If I burn her until she shuts up, or have Bridget kick her until she cries for distracting Bridget from her homework, my business. If you think the government can do anything about that, they can’t. I have a way of making friends with CPS types.”_

_“...What the hell is wrong with you?” Adalwolfa exclaimed, her face turning to a scowl. “You don’t even deny that you’re having your adopted children beat on my niece? Do you even see it as wrong?”_

_“For your information, no. I don’t. That’s one of the things I think runs in the Wedekind family, actually. Emil had it, you sure have it, Lena’s got signs of it. Fanatical obsession with right and wrong, good and evil, doing things the right way. It makes you a good police officer, but does it allow you to understand anything beyond that incredibly simple lens? No. I think it’s driving you insane, honestly. How many perps have you “accidentally” shot, Adalwolfa? How many bribes do I have to dole out to keep you around? Seriously, you act like I’m your enemy. You’re a crusader, and the crusaders needed to be funded somehow. I’m like the Pope, is what I’m saying.”_

_“Actually, feudal lords mostly financed their own crusades, except for the Fourth Crusade, which was financed by sacking Constantinople.” Bridget interjected. “It’s not that hard to remember.”_

_“Nerd.” Julianne responded, smiling._

_“Take that back.” Bridget said._

_“Not really feeling it.” Julianne got into a fighting stance that Adalwolfa hoped came from karate classes, and Teague raised a hand. The two promptly shut up._

_“Dammit. They can be a bit argumentative sometimes. Bridget likes her medieval things, and reads all her books, Julianne has her things...You know how kids can be.” Teague shrugged, sighing a bit._

_“And Lena?”_

_“Lena likes brooding in her room with hatred towards everyone else in the house. She used to call the police, until she realized that I’m just a model citizen and the cops know it, so now... I don’t think she’s stable, honestly. She mostly hides from the rest of us. Even skips meals, until she gets really hungry a few days later and has to come. Sometimes she drinks from Julianne’s stash. Also seen her smoke. Don’t know how she got a lighter. I’m confident she won’t do anything with it.”_

_“Can I have Lena? Clearly you don’t seem to like her or give a crap about her. I think that her and I could get along well.” Adalwolfa tried to seem polite and respectful enough, despite feeling nothing but burning hatred. Supposedly, the Buddha said that holding onto anger is like holding onto a burning coal and hoping someone else gets burned. She was willing to take that risk._

_“No. She’s my kid. Came out of me. I still love her. Look, I don’t manage my house the way that you would probably like me to, and I’m okay with that, but I at least value her as a person. Enough that I wouldn’t want to just let her go and give her to a murderer and a fanatic. Don’t act like you would raise her any better.”_

_Lena looked as though she wanted to say something, but she went back to her book, before standing up and going to another room, Bridget whispering something in Lena’s ear that seemed to make her feel a bit better, if body language was any indication. Adalwolfa snarled. “I’m just saying that three teenagers must be a burden on you. I could take care of one.”_

_“I don’t want my Lena to end up like Charles Whitman, Adalwolfa.” Teague said._

_“She’s not going to go up to the University of Texas at Austin’s Tower and shoot 49 people. Perp did it, anyway, partially because he wanted his abusive father to be reunited with his mother, and because of the amphetamines running in his bloodstream. You’ve know that killing if you know an Austin police sniper. They practically have to memorize it after the Convention Center massacre and the comparisons to the 1966 shooting.” Adalwolfa laughed a bit hollowly._

_“You’re going to teach her to hate, to fear, to see the world in your right and your wrong. Adalwolfa, what does your name mean in German?”_

_“Noble wolf.”_

_“Right. Noble wolf. Noble I highly doubt, but wolf? Absolutely. I don’t want Lena to end up like a fanatic, or a killer, or whatever else you plan on turning her into.”_

_Adalwolfa laughed mockingly at that. “Then what are you turning Julianne and Bridget into?”_

_The two women stared at each other for some time, before Bridget interrupted. “Look, all of this arguing and insulting is getting kind of annoying. The fact remains that currently, all three of us are with Vanessa, and if she doesn’t want you to have Lena, you can’t have Lena. You’re Lena’s aunt, Vanessa’s Lena’s mother. It’s that simple.”_

_Teague smiled a bit at that. “Thanks, Bridget.”_

_Adalwolfa thought to herself. Anything. Any good reason. Her brain scrambled trying to find something to say. She couldn’t think of anything. No matter what should happen, clearly it wasn’t going to happen. She stood up and walked to her kitchen, opening the fridge. “Anyone want a beer?”_

  
_Julianne raised her hand, and Lena yelled her request as well. Adalwolfa cracked open her bottle with a bottle opener, took a swig, and closed her eyes, sighing._


	6. Roguish Dealings

**THE ROGUE:**

_ The Foxhunter was not the only superhero in Cromwell. The Rogue stood in an alley by Arrow Pizza, across the street from the the US Military-Civilian Federal Bank, previously a Wells Fargo. He felt his tight body armor hold to his body, weight distributed so it felt as light as possible. Overlapping scale armor underneath kevlar. _

_ The closest he’d seen to anything like it was what the thin psycho who worked for Teague wore, and she may as well have been wearing a knight’s suit compared to his sleek, futuristic armor. Genius, engineer, billionaire, philanthropist, sociologist, superhero... At his side was a long rapier, and a helmet that featured a darkened visor that covered the top of his head to his chin, covering his face. No guns. Everyone used a gun. If he wanted to be an icon, an example for people to look up to, he’d need to adhere to a different kind of superhero ideal than, say, the Foxhunter. No killing, no guns, defend the innocent and fight to change things for the better. _

_ He took a deep breath. He wasn’t exactly quaking in his leather boots, but he wasn’t excited for this. The police had taken control of the bank. Two cops in SWAT gear at the door, probably a hell of a lot more inside. As usual, it was time to see if he could solve this diplomatically.  _

_ With a bounce in his step, he waited for the traffic to stop and crossed the street, approaching the two officers. “Evening, officers. How have your nights been?” One of the cops started to speak, but the other cut him off. _

_ The second cop spoke with a male voice. “Pretty shit. I broke my fingertip and had to get one of our hospitals to get it X-Rayed, and they haven’t had tylenol for years. Stung like a bitch the whole way through. Rodriguez here isn’t gonna say anything useful. I would ask if you want to use the bank, but I’d guess you have cash to spare.” _

_ The Rogue nodded, his posture quite relaxed. “Yeah, of course. Mind if I ask what the two of you are doing, here? This is a military building.” The cop who wasn’t named Rodriguez scoffed under his armor, and pointed at the building with a thumb as he spoke. “Was a military building. Now it’s police.” _

_ “By what legal authority?” _

_ “What are you, a lawyer?” _

_ “I’m a superhero, sir. I hope that your organization hasn’t been extorting anyone this way. I’ve heard rumors.” _

_ “Of course not. You got a smoke?” _

_ “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t.” He shrugged apologetically. “Mind if I come inside and make sure that nothing’s going on? If there are no issues, surely you can’t have a problem with letting me in.” _

_ Before the cop responded, there was a sound of footsteps out of nowhere, and both cops’ heads popped like grapes. Two sickening bangs. Uncloaking was that figure, the Foxhunter, who ran for the bank door, kicking it down and leveling her submachine gun. The Rogue reached out a hand. “No! Stop!” He started running in after her. _

_ When he entered, there was no sign of the Foxhunter other than the spraying of bullets and the killings of cop after cop after cop, red covering more and more of the wall. Eventually, only the tellers and bank patrons remained (Her aim was surprisingly discerning, short bursts only), along with ten corpses. “Foxhunter, you’ll never change the city like this.” _

_ “Who are you to tell me that?” She uncloaked, then growled underneath her gas mask, drawing from her pocket some money to hand to a teller. “I’m sorry for all of the trouble.” She said, turning away from the Rogue. _

_ “I’m a sociologist. Sort of. I know enough about sociology to know about things like strain theory. If people can’t achieve their desired goals, feels locked out of the system, is struggling with something serious in their life, or can’t fulfill two or more roles of...Basically, there are reasons why people turn to crime. Reasons that can’t be dealt with by just shooting everyone. Those cops? They were an armed organization in a lawless city. They probably took over this bank to try and get cash through systematic extortion to fund their operation, so they could keep some kind of order in their districts and keep their families safe, or friends. Criminals need to be punished, and without a police force, we need vigilantes, but we should be working towards getting rid of the need for us to be judge, jury, and, in your case, executioner, right?” _

_ “What do you do, then, besides let murderers and rapists survive to hurt others?” She asked, pointedly not raising her gun. The Rogue wasn’t quite sure why she hadn’t fired yet. He’d expected her to. She seemed volatile and kind of out of her mind. _

_ “Other than actually trying to show people that they can be better through my actions, I...I do things outside of this identity. I know that’s not a great answer, but I can’t say much about my secret identity. Why are you doing this, Foxhunter? Is it just because you want to clean up the city?” His tone was calm, level. Or at least he tried to keep it that way. _

_ “I’m doing this for the Wild Hunt. I have my rules, I stick to them. Good is good, evil is evil, so I stay neutral and keep hunting. It makes everything better in the end. I can’t hurt you. I don’t want to, honestly. All that I exist for is for the Wild Hunt. I follow my rules, I take my trophies, I honor the slain.” _

_ “You...don’t want to hurt me? I was under the impression that you were a ruthless vigilante, and my efforts were somehow antithetical to yours, ideologically. There are the bodies of ten cops right around us.” He said, incredulous. “I thought you were my arch-nemesis. The dark mirror to everything I was. You weren’t supposed to have rules. I was supposed to have rules.” _

_ “You saw me as your Joker, or maybe Scarecrow, with the use of the gas. Here’s the thing, though. This isn’t that kind of superhero story. There are no supervillains in Cromwell, just monsters. I hunt monsters. Think of me as more of a demon slayer or something, if you really want. I just fought you once or twice because you struck first.” _

_ “They’re not monsters, they’re not demons, they’re just normal people who for one reason or another have done some bad things. Often, very bad things. They need to be punished, but we can’t be this single-minded. Institutions need to be fixed, people need to be actually helped... You’re the villain, here, I’m the hero, what the hell is wrong? Why aren’t you shooting at me?” _

_ “This isn’t that kind of story.” The Foxhunter walked out of the bank and cloaked herself, and the Rogue tried to get back into his persona. There were no puns, there was no fight between dashing good and ominous evil.  _

Darren Worthington sat in his penthouse apartment, sifting through files. He had a thermos of black coffee on his desk, a desktop computer that was top of the line, and many “legally acquired” police and governmental files of various people. He searched “Wild Hunt” on Google.

The first thing that came up was a plot point in a fantasy novel. The second was another element of a fantasy novel. The third was the Wikipedia article for the European folk myth. The fourth, however, was a newspaper article, from 2011. “Rogue APD Chief Shot in “Wild Hunt” Against Crime”. It detailed how infamous leader Adalwolfa Wedekind used her power as a police chief during a national crisis to dodge oversight and lead a fanatical crusade against anyone she feared might be a Son or Daughter, ending with her setting up on the fire escape of a tall restaurant that was once a firehouse in the mountain town of Cassidy, Tennessee to commit a thoroughly illegal mass shooting with a high-powered rifle, killing seven adults and four children, presumably assuming they would grow up like their parents. Before Tennessee State Troopers could intervene and arrest her, one lucky Son played counter-sniper and hit her shoulder on the fire escape. By the time she recovered in a Tennessee prison hospital, she’d been granted unconditional amnesty on the grounds that it was clearly a misunderstanding, and Wedekind was informed that her Beta had given her back her position as Police Chief, claiming that she would be a better choice. The second shooter would later claim after his arrest that she shot his wife and only child.

The woman was believed to have been acting in response to multiple high-profile bombings by the Sons and Daughters in her native Austin, as well as rumors of escaped Sons and Daughters fleeing to Cassidy, a far more sympathetic town, for a widely discussed second assault on Nashville.

He then looked into the Wedekind line to find that Adalwolfa Wedekind was related through marriage to local crime lord Dr. Teague (which might explain the amnesty), who he would call an enemy if he knew how to deal with her and her damned swordsman. The worst thing was that Bridget had actually beat him once in a pun-duel while beating him with that stupid sword of hers. On top of that it was practically impossible to get Teague arrested, given the general lack of a system and her control of what remained. Teague’s child, Lena Wedekind, fit about the same height as the Foxhunter, too. He couldn’t be certain, but it would make sense, where she learnt her style.

He still preferred the fox to what he knew of the wolf, thinking about it.

_ It had been merely a day after the meeting with the Foxhunter at the bank, and he was definitely still thinking about what she had said. He wasn’t wrong, but it was, ironically for him and his beliefs, hard to think of her as human. He supposed he should start. On his usual rounds, driving slowly on his sleek black motorcycle, he passed a woman with the glint of metal on her back.  _

_ Spotting this, he continued driving through the artificially-lit streets in the semi-dark, looping back to that same spot, and parking. He dismounted, drew his rapier, and started to walk by her. “Ha! I assume you would be Bridget MacAskill? What nefarious schemes are you enforcing at this hour?” _

_ She nodded to some plastic bags in her hands. “Shopping. I needed to go and get some things from the CVS. Shampoo, bubble gum, bandages, rubbing alcohol, Goo-B-Gone...” She shrugged. “You actually want to fight right now?” She took the sword from its place resting on  her shoulder (Even shopping she had it with her, apparently). _

_ “How many people have you killed, Bridget?” _

_ “No idea.” _

_ “Exactly. En garde!” He drew his thin rapier from his left side and thrusted at Bridget. “Do you get my point?” She probably couldn’t see it under the helmet, but he was smirking. _

_ She quickly blocked it away with the claymore. “Not really. It didn’t hit the mark.” She slashed at him furiously. “I think you’ll find this a cutting retort.”  _

_ “I don’t normally see you this relaxed.” He redirected the strike to hit the ground expertly, and twirled his blade a bit. _

_ “I’m trying to take over the city to save it, but I don’t have to be a perfect soldier all the time.” She held the pommel in both hands and begun to circle around with him, dropping the bag of shampoo. “But, as always, everything I do has some steel behind it.” She slashed diagonally, her sword whooshing through the air. _

_ “More of a metaphor, really. Your wit isn’t very sharp.” He mocked, stepping back to avoid the strike and close from the side.  _

_ She then took one hand from the pommel and quickly chopped his throat with the meat of her hand. “But there is a time to be blunt.” She laughed a bit as he begun to cough, dodging a stab of his and following up with a strike to the wrist as hard as she could. The armor saved his hand, but he did drop the sword in pain. _

“Dammit!” He winced.

_ Bridget picked up her plastic bags and kept walking. “It was a wristy move, but I think it paid off.”  _

**LENA WEDEKIND-TEAGUE:**

_ She stood in her trophy room, looking at the monster in front of her. She heard whispers. Guttural growls, soft, crooning tones, even a child’s crying. The monster with the skull head, words in an unknown tongue carved into her body, the wooden doll’s arm and the flabby arm spoke. “The offer is simple. I will make you a far superior hunter.” _

_ “Who are you? What are you?” Lena asked, her expression hardening. The monster’s voices begun to chatter and shriek, but the monster herself stayed silent for a bit, before responding. “I am the First Summoner. The powers I am linked to do not permit duplicity, and they grant great power. So I will keep my word. Do you want to be superior?” _

_ “I’m fine as I am, thank you, so...” She shrugged, certainly wary of this strange being. If such a thing were possible, the sockets of its eyes narrowed, as if it were squinting at her. It then spoke. “That is negligent. If you truly care about the Wild Hunt, you will do whatever it takes to be the best hunter possible. Unless you are simply a hypocrite who enjoys murder.” The chattering of bone demons could be heard from the characters carved into her. _

_ “...No. I’m...I’m in this all the way. What’s your deal? I’ll give up my immortal soul if I have to.” _

_ “I can make you a weavewolf. Ettlib, Soulweaver to the Skinslord, owes me a favor. That is how things are to me. I never age, I never die, so I accrue many favors from around the planes and in turn others gain many favors from me. Few of my decisions are truly my own. Few of my thoughts reality. Every deal a new puppet string. But I do not wish for anything else. I have given up my ambition, my hope, my joy, and my love, among other things, for bounty after bounty, piece after piece in the celestial game.  _

_ “But as for turning you into a weavewolf, you would be an extremely powerful werewolf-like creature, though one made of magic and thrice the size. Teeth like daggers and bulletproof skin, along with reflexes and thinking faster than any human. You would retain your full thought processes, of course.” _

_ “What’s the catch, then? I know you’re trying to trick me somehow, you’re a classic contract devil. Offering power, tempting me into it by-” _

_ “You’re still going to take the deal, are you not?” _

_ Lena sighed. “Yeah. I am. If I don’t, I’d be going back on everything I believe in.” _

_ The First Summoner nodded. “Then kindly don’t act as though you can outwit me. The catch is what a weavewolf is. The power of a weavewolf is directly drawn from the ways multiple souls interact. Two dead souls, one living soul, stitched together. You’d be in control the entire time if you so chose, but to transform you would have to sleep, and when you sleep you’d see one, the other, or both. They’d still be dead. Just...attached to you in your dreamscape. Being that your body would essentially be a magical construct, should you choose to allow one of the other souls to take control for as long as you see fit, your body would change accordingly, though they would still be no less a part of you than your anger or happiness, for example. Such is the way weaving works. Anyway, even as a human, you’d have some traits of your wolf form, such as heightened perception. Three souls are necessary, as said. You have one already, so you pick one and tell me, I’ll tell Ettlib my choice, and he does his thing.” She nodded to one of the taller scorpion-men. _

_ Lena didn’t have to think too hard for this at all. “My aunt. Adalwolfa Wedekind. I want to see her again. She’s my choice.” It wasn’t as though there were many other contenders, and while Adalwolfa was a bit unstable in her last year or so of life, she still was a good person who Lena deeply admired. Even after the justified mass shooting. That was fine. Lena did a similar thing as the Foxhunter, really. _

_ The First Summoner’s many voices, along with all the sound in the room, from the faint sound of Lena’s breathing to the gurgling water that made up the jaws of the skeletons behind her, all completely stopped, the skull turning to Ettlib. Ettlib’s tail stabbed into Lena’s stomach like a lightning-fast gut punch, and her mouth opened. She would have gasped, but the sound simply did not exist. _

_ It wasn’t painful. Not physically. The stinger went straight into her, but it felt completely harmless. But space had to be made to fit three other souls inside of one body, and so memories begun to corrupt and fray, like a damaged CD. Things skipped or were unintentionally or “unintentionally” gotten rid of, memories, birthdays, warmer moments between her and Bridget, memories of when she heard the news of Adalwolfa’s death at the hands of Dr. Teague, that time she lost her wallet... _

_ The stinger silently slid back out of her gut, and there, strangely, was not any kind of wound at all. As if it had never happened. Her eyelids slammed down, and she hit the ground. In the dreamscape’s rolling meadow were two other people. The first was a police chief in a long coat and hat, carrying a scoped rifle, and the second was a woman in a tight lavender dress, unarmed, her makeup impeccable and hair loose down her shoulders. Lena completely ignored Dixie, running straight to Adalwolfa, hugging her warmly and uncharacteristically of what Dixie probably assumed of Lena. _

_ “Aunt Adalwolfa, I’m...I’m sorry this had to happen. But you’re back, sort of, and...Dear god...” Lena said, Adalwolfa hugging her back. “Lena. I’m checking your memories and you’ve done well. I’m proud of you. I’m just happy that we’re finally reunited. I know you didn’t choose to let her come back.” _

_ Dixie rolled her eyes. “Wait? I can see Lena’s memories?” To counter this, Lena tried to rifle through Dixie’s memories. _

_ “Hey, I had no idea that Lena was afraid of insec-” Dixie said, as Lena tried to force herself to wake up. She yelled the two words, and the dreamscape broke, her eyes opened, and she felt the power of being a creature of primal magic. She, oddly, was outside the plantation, and she could see no signs of there ever being a portal. _

_ So she began to run on four, muscled legs through the forest to get to the road to Cromwell, an overgrown beast crackling with magic, knowing what she had to do. _

**TAYLOR:**

Taylor looked at what she did quickly. The blast stick was surprisingly effective, that was for sure. But it wasn’t as though it mattered that much. This woman was just yet another common thug, working with Lady Baines and her otherworldly associates. She kept stabbing this “Bridget”’s chest over and over, to make sure that she were dead, while Teague looked extremely dejected. Baines turned to her. “Vanessa? Are you alright?” She put a hand on Teague’s shoulder.

“Bridget’s dead. You ever loved anyone, Baines? Really loved anyone?” Taylor was a bit confused, but thought it was probably a good idea to listen. This might be usable information.

“No, I can’t say I have.”

“That’s a shame. She was one of the most important things in my life.” Dr. Teague said, and Taylor interrupted. “You let her try and murder me, and you’re clearly a terrible person. What are you trying to do? What game is this?”

“My kid is dead and you killed her. I’m not exactly happy. Have some empathy, Lancelot.”

“She wouldn’t have died if she didn’t challenge me to a duel, something you wholeheartedly endorsed.” Taylor sighed and raised the blast stick, aiming it at Teague. She shot, and missed by a few inches, the other woman scattering. Last shot, another loud miss. No more cylinder-cones. So she tossed the blast stick and made a run with the spatha.

She ran, about two feet away from stabbing Teague, before Baines spoke as quickly as she could. “ _ Greater Teleport Other - 23 Birch Street, Cromwell, Georgia, United States, Earth. Greater Create Undead - Death Knight. Maximized Enervation." _

At that, Teague disappeared in a blast of violet light, Bridget’s corpse rose up as nothing less than a skeletal, free-willed warrior powered by the magical energy of those she’d slain in battle, a hollow, inhuman mockery of her past self, a death knight, and, of course a beam of violet light smashed into Taylor’s chest.

  
All of her will was simply sapped. She hit the ground, unable to even think about getting back up. Lady Baines pointed her finger at Taylor. “ _ Lesser Sleep. _ ” With a loud cracking sound, Taylor slept.


	7. Apocalyptic Meltdown

**ADALWOLFA WEDEKIND:**

_ July 15, 2011. Adalwolfa - Age 44. The sound of her thoroughly outdated iPod Classic as it played in her ears drowned out most of the noise on the Austin, TX-Huntsville, AL flight. “Mister Sandman, bring me a dream, make him the cutest that I’ve ever seen...” She listened to the song and closed her eyes, awoken on the chaotic flight only by the sound of her phone ringing. She drew it from her pants pocket and pulled an earbud from her ear. “Hello?” _

_ “Hi. Aunt Adalwolfa. You mentioned you were going on a flight. I’m mostly sitting on the curb by the Texadelphia on Brodie Lane. Before you ask, I’ll stop smoking when I die of lung cancer.” Lena joked. “Look, I’m out of the house now, I have a roommate, I can do what I want. Her name’s Agatha. She used to date Bridget. For obvious reasons, that didn’t last long. Apparently Bridget has the sexual skills of a dead rat. Anyway, just wondering how you’re doing.” _

_ Adalwolfa laughed at the comment about Bridget. “I warned you. You’re an adult, and it’s your job to go and make your own decisions. To an extent. I’m going to Cassidy, Tennessee. It’s a mountain town known mostly for, previously, being the birthplace of Oz Fenton, the opportunist Nazi who’s been staking claims in Cromwell. He’s the guy who the National Socialist Aryan Fellowship calls the “truest disciple of Hitler”, being that he was actually educated in Memphis and can quote Mein Kampf, which is kind of impressive for a neo-Nazi. The ones I’m used to just attach the American racism to Nazi symbolism. Still, they’re all worthy of death. Now Cassidy is known for being where the Sons and Daughters have set up something of a stronghold. They’ve got a lot of support. Not much of Tennessee likes Nashville. The Nazis, meanwhile, have fragmented. The National Socialist Aryan Fellowship’s mostly moved cities, while other, less formally Nazi-ish Nazis continue to have a presence there, mostly as fellow travellers for the Sons and Daughters, latching onto power.” _

_ “Why are you going there? Seems like kind of a shithole.” _

_ “It is a shithole, and that’s what I’m going to fix. Someone needs to make a point to the world that the territory of the US isn’t up for grabs by racists. So I’m going to make that point. I won’t be going to Cassidy to admire the mountain scenery.” Silently, she thanked the fact that the proposed legislation to limit the bringing of guns onto airplanes had been shot down. There had been multiple shootings on planes, but nothing that really galvanized fear. After all, there were shootings on the ground. “You understand, right? I’m doing the right thing?” _

_ “Yeah. Of course. Absolutely.” Lena said, seemingly without a moment’s hesitation. “See you, mo- Aunt Adalwolfa.” Adalwolfa noted the slip of the tongue. _

_ “Thank you. Especially after the bombings that killed Richards, Yates, and Marston. Firebomb, nail bomb, sophisticated IED. Different bombers. Same M.O. The Sons and Daughters.” She spoke with venom in her voice. “I’ll talk to you soon, meine liebchen.” She hung up. _

_ After the plane landed, she gathered her heavy luggage bag and rolled it behind her through the air. To anybody else, it would look as though she had simply packed for a trip. In reality, however, the paisley bag contained little more than a M24 SWS scoped rifle, painted a dull grey, and bag after bag of 7.62x51mm NATO rounds. _

**ALYX SEAGLASS:**

Commandant Seaglass had had much better days. She wore her usual baggy on-ship uniform, her eyes were glazed half-over, and after checking the calendar (Dec. 25, 2741, which she noted was the day of an ancient holiday important to the predecessors to the Solar Republic of Tenna) she entered Central Command Beta, a large room on the scout ship  _ Imperious Gratitude,  _ where she saw her crew working on their tasks at their holosurfaces. Through the massive glass windows of the room she saw an Earth-class planet orbiting a Sol-class yellow star. Kennan Graphite, the local science type, had called it EC-1-3-K-90. Earth-class one three kappa ninety. Seaglass would never understand how the Tennan Scientific-Technical Division’s leadership did anything. Honestly, she just called them not the TSTD, but just the STD. That little acronym had stuck around for the last seven hundred years, and the STD was uncomfortable and invasive enough for it to work, in her eyes. 

EC-1-3-K-90 was unlike anything that Seaglass had ever seen before. Two large continents. They had sent spies down to impersonate locals. Two had portrayed knights or something, the last a servant in Essin. The level of heretical extrasensory matter modification was completely out of hand, as if nobody realized how addictive it was. Except in Essin. No, if  _ Imperious Gratitude  _ might have bombed them into an apocalyptic ruin without Essin, Essin was the last straw. The servant found a domain that seemed to buck the trends of the Dark-Age-locked kingdoms completely. Chlorine gas, machine guns, electric lights. Still ancient, to the SRT, but it was more than enough to raise questions. If that kind of technology got around on that heresy-drenched planet...By the Highest Angel.

It was simple, then. “Graphite! Marsh!” She yelled to two lower-level operators, one a thin man, the other a larger woman. “The kingdom called Redspire. We have a vague idea of where it is. I want a M900 as close to it as we can get.”

“Commandant Seaglass, the M900s are notoriously buggy and are an experimental armament. We only have them because Graphite begged like a child to get the new toys, and Requisitions okayed it in pity. Sure you don’t want to use a M650, Commandant?” Marsh asked.

There were rules about insulting other operators, but fuck Graphite. He deserved whatever he got. STD fuck. “No, I don’t want to use a M650. All we’ve gathered about Redspire is that there is an undead lich god who lives there. An undead lich god. Our job is to incinerate a god. So we need all fifty megatons of M900 overkill.”

Marsh looked at her commandant, tilting her head. “Why Redspire? Shouldn’t we be dealing with Essin or the horrible world full of nightmares?”

“Didn’t they teach you anything at the temples, Marsh? Nightmares don’t go away to bombs. Nightmares need to be fought with faith and devotion. As for Essin, I was getting to that. Two M650s. The radiation should also get rid of those cute little colonists who worship the same god we do. Shame. On the other hand, if we allow any society to develop too far, especially a heretical extrasensory one, we could end up with a serious problem in four hundred years, and I don’t want to deal with that. It’s strange that these beings seem so human, and worship our gods, but my guess is that they’re descended from colonists sent hundreds of years ago or the like. Marsh, get the targeting preparations ready, Graphite, get me a drink. Venusian death whiskey. Highest Angel’s will, let it be ours.”

“Did you mean to reverse those orders?”

“No. Fuck you, Graphite.”

**ADALWOLFA WEDEKIND:**

_ She exited the airport and went to a small lot close by, the hot sun making it feel more and more impractical to wear her favored coat. Normally she drank a lot of water to try and counterbalance it, or just dropped the coat, but this was a special event. She needed her coat. She politely asked to rent a car. _

_ “Holy...You’re the Alpha Wolf, aren’t you?” The guy at the Budget car rental shack whispered. “Don’t tell anyone I said this, but you’re doing the Lord’s work.” _

_ “Why the secrecy?” _

_ “This ain’t exactly the place to be a fan. Retrograde Technologies owns this place, just like they own all of Rocket City.” _

_ She nodded in immediate understanding. Corporations had divvied up or even outright annexed some cities in the chaos, and, to keep the state of emergency going, she suspected they sent money to the Sons and Daughters, as well, to fuel the “war”.  _

_ She rented her car, put her bag in the trunk, and started on the road out of the city north. Her iPod continued to make noise, on loop. “Sandman, I’m so alone, don’t have nobody to call my own, please turn on your magic beam, Mr. Sandman bring me a dream...” She smiled a bit at the cheery old lyrics and relaxed in the driver’s seat of the car. It smelled like smoke. _

_ Well, nothing particularly to worry about there. Just annoying. _

**HAWK PALADIN CORWIN:**

_ Hawk Paladin Corwin had stepped through the portal, getting some odd stares, no doubt for his costumery, but he nonetheless noticed Emmet’s, a large building which claimed to serve food. He waited on a short line to enter the building, and asked the man behind him what people ate there. The man, confused, told him it served good hamburgers. So, when he got inside, he ordered a “hamburger”, and found he had nothing to barter for it with, especially not “dollars”. So, he was told in no uncertain terms to get out, and the Hawk Paladin sat down at a table anyway, to take in the surreal scenery of Tennessee. _

_ It was then that he started to notice something odd. Across the street was the Firehouse Grille, which wouldn’t be too strange to him. Nothing about this place as anything like what he knew. Maybe it was a restaurant. Maybe it was a place where people were burnt. Eh. The strange thing was that a woman in typically strange Tennessee attire seemed to be climbing up the black metal construction affixed to the side of the Firehouse Grille. He saw her do something, set up, and draw from a large trunk or bag a gun. _

**ADALWOLFA WEDEKIND:**

_ She took the M24 out of the luggage bag and begun to load it, methodically. Most chiefs settled into desk work, but tradition and order had largely gone the way of the dinosaur during the interstate emergency. She stood on the metal surface, held the rifle in both hands, the grey stock against her shoulder, and peered through the scope. One man, young, in what looked like some kind of old chainmail and cloth. Some people were strange, but this one was unlikely to be a Nazi, or, worse, a Son or Daughter. _

_ He would live. _

_ Her crosshairs spotted a young man in normal clothing, blue jeans and a t-shirt with some religious charity’s name she could barely make out on it. Better safe than sorry. She pulled back the bolt, pushed it back in, and pulled the trigger. His head shattered into gory bits. A few yards away was a tall man with what might be a swastika barely visible underneath a sleeve. Bolt back. Bolt forward. Bolt down. Trigger. Dead. Better safe than sorry. _

_ Next were a man and a woman. Kaitlyn Sears and her boyfriend Dustin Lane. A Son and a Daughter. Kaitlyn was known as an Austinite who wiretapping said was coming to Cassidy to make plans, and Dustin probably was involved in the bombing at the Texas State Capitol. Bolt back. Bolt forward. Bolt down. Trigger. Repeat. The remnants of becoming a police sniper before being a chief, and never having to give up that skill. _

_ Woman in a red dress. Color of the Sons and Daughters. Bang. Dead. Leonard Kuhn. Known Nazi, descendant of Fritz Kuhn, American Nazi historical figure. Flanked by two agents, armed with a hunting rifle and an AR-15. Shot to the heart. Breathe. Children behind them. Two young girls, one young boy, last one gender unknown. All white. They seem bored. Not worth the risk that this is a sign of dissent. _

_ With swift and practiced motions, she killed them all. Parents often give children their political views. “So please turn on your magic beam...Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream!” _

**HAWK PALADIN CORWIN:**

_ He sat there in complete silence as he watched her take aim. The thunder of the gunshots. The bodies hitting the ground. The blood and brains everywhere. It was as if an angel had come to judge. Or perhaps something far more evil. This was not magic, but it was brutal all the same. He ran towards the third portal Lady Baines had set up, this time in a hard-to-find alleyway, thankful she’d made sure that nobody would find it this time.  _

_ When he came back to Essin, he prayed to the Highest Angel. Never again. He was lucky to live. Tennessee wasn’t meant for him.  _

_ He prayed to forget. _

_ He never did. _

**ALYX SEAGLASS:**

“All stand for the Senate Speaker’s address of the weekcycle.” The telescreen in the corner of the room came to life automatically, and Commandant Seaglass turned to look at it. She would voice her objections to having her work interrupted every weekcycle by a series of irrelevant legal notes and the occasional positive statement, but it was important to be a well-informed voter, and it was no secret that not being patriotic was a form of minor heresy.

Even she, someone who valued the system such that she blew up entire societies for a job, still disliked the STD for one reason. They were the ones who ran the monitoring devices.

“We’re allowed to speak during these, right?” Marsh whined.

“Yeah. Quietly. So you need to shut up.”

“...Got it. Commandant.”

**BRIDGET MacASKILL:**

_ The Mystic Glade was probably one of the more popular clubs in the Historic District, with its bubblegum scenery and faerie theme worthy of a Hollywood production. The original Mystic Glade was in Crossroads City, Utah, and had two major differences. One: It was in Crossroads City, so of course the owner was some kind of superpowered dream wizard faerie queen woman. The second was that the Crossroads Mystic Glade was known for being partially a club, partially a massive orgy, and partially the locus of the largest drug operation in the West. So Bridget had heard. She’d never been. _

_ However, the Mystic Glade in Cromwell was, while a great place to get drunk, high, and/or completely unable to think in any way like you used to be, certainly not close to the Crossroads City Mystic Glade. It was rare to have a chain of clubs, especially in this economy, but she guessed that there was a demand for drugs and booze in Cromwell. Probably self-medication. _

_ As she sipped her glass of ice-cold cola, she occasionally glanced at the elaborate wooden stage set up in the back of the club, below a pseudo-Roman balcony. On the stage, Dixie, in a very tight lavender dress, her hair actually styled, held a karaoke microphone in one hand, a bottle of beer in the other. Bridget rolled her eyes as her friend sang along to “Bubblegum Bitch” by Marianna and the Diamonds, a bouncy electropop song that was far from Bridget’s taste. Dixie wasn’t a bad singer, though. Wasn’t good, but wasn’t bad. _

_ She seemed to have the self-confidence that only alcohol brought. Or perhaps it was just how Dixie was. With her, one could never really tell. Bridget rolled her eyes and gave Dixie a thumbs-up without really looking at her. _

Bridget felt herself be enveloped in flame. The heat burnt her up completely, the world turning to fire, but each death, and she felt the deaths like numbers ticking down or up on a mental counter, saved her. Lives. Two new deaths. When the fire died, after the great lightning crack, the world around her was a ruin, and whatever signs of Lady Baines, Teague, or the paladin were there had been burnt away completely. More than two. So many.

The mansion had been reduced to little more than bits of rubble. Not much. Charred. Everyone in Essin, gone. Somehow, as if it were the most basic fact in the world, something she always knew, she knew that she could only be slain either in a fair fight or if the massive reserve of deaths built up around her ticked down to zero extra “lives”. She would have found it odd not to know that. Everyone knew what could kill them, right? 

The skeletal warrior with the melted sword and clothes completely burnt off begun to walk around the wasteland. This was nuclear. No question. The charred trees, the fire, the utter destruction. She’d seen videos. The Tsar Bomba. The biggest nuclear weapon in human history. Completely impractical. Fifty megatons. Sure, she liked medieval history as a kid, but there was something about history.

That was when she was alive. Now? She couldn’t feel more different. This world was a video game now. People didn’t matter. Not even dead Teague, dead Dixie. Numbers. She was so far above them, now. Like ants to a human being. She survived a nuclear explosion without a scratch. Bridget had a choice now. She could stay on this wasteland of a continent, or she could step through that beautiful, glowing portal, the last remnant of Lady Baines, and go home. Not to fix anything anymore, but to claim a modern throne.

She walked through the portal and saw the familiar apartment that was her own. It was time to begin looking for weapons. She had an idle thought. Before she was a modern-day knight. Loyal. Skilled at arms. Disciplined. Stupid. Strange thought to have in these circumstances, but her thoughts felt disjointed now. Unconnected, sometimes. So it made sense in her head. Now, she wasn’t a knight in anything but name. She had always wanted to rule, right? It just was a matter of motivation.

She begun to walk out of the apartment to the second apartment next to the first used as an armory, punched a hole through the door, unlocked it, and entered the dimly-lit room full of every kind of rifle, pistol, explosive, tool, or other relevant object one could imagine. Instead of Bridget MacAskill, why not go by Despot? It was a simpler name. She would go for “Diety” or something, but she didn’t want to get arrogant.

She found a futuristic Beretta ARX160 assault rifle and laughed to herself internally (She couldn’t laugh anymore, more clatter her jaw against her skull). Time to claim a title.

**ALYX SEAGLASS:**

She looked at the micro-telescreen mounted on her desk at the zoomed-in footage of the wrecked Ground Zero blast area, to find a wrecked mansion and what looked like a skeleton walking through a extrasensory heretical portal. That probably wasn’t too important. She got a blue and white news popup on the micro-telescreen, and saw a Tennan man in the usual civilian jumpsuit patterned with elaborate swirls and whorls, like green snake skin mixed with a giant fingerprint pattern. “Artemis has attacked Mercury with a cunning mass-driver strike and a series of high-energy plasma bombardment waves that appear to be based on technology from the Kri-Tokha.”

She growled and kept listening. Those colonist hypocrite fuckers who both rejected Tennan ultra-capitalism and yet were created by it had the balls to get those avian aliens who didn’t even believe in extrasensory heresy to help them... God dammit. Couldn’t the crows go back to eating worms? Bastards.

**LELIEL:**

Leliel, her angelic features stocky but too classically beautiful to be real, felt the chains on her wrists as she confronted her old overseer, the Highest Angel, in his personal study. It was more or less identical to the rest of the massive field of clouds, but that was the point. It was far away from most of the other things that happened here, so that was good enough. “What, you didn’t find some way to punish me, too?”

The Highest Angel looked at Leliel, and she thought she could almost hear a sigh. “No. I understand why you did what you did. I just wish you knew better. We both set up three planets. Once I didn’t intervene at all, and it devolved into chaos and evil. Then I intervened to unite the planet, and when I left the colonies it set up in space split off and the second Earth ended up as a vile and warlike power, content to squash primitive species in their infancy.”

“...And the third time, you decided not to let anything change at all, so you and I took ideas made up by the first Earth’s people to create a world where the crossbow would never be invented, much less the gun or the mass driver. However, the three planets met and now America, the Continent, and the Solar Republic of Tennan are getting involved with each other. There’s criminals, killers, monsters of all kinds...And you’re here to blame me for it.”

“Of course not. No matter what, the Solar Republic of Tennan would most likely have found the third planet. In retrospect, I think I put them too close together for their own good. I’m just ashamed that you created an issue intentionally in the magic that we were working on. Teleportation. It would seem necessary while we were trying to limit the Solar Republic of Tennan, too late I would add, but when we fully utilized magic to keep the Continent from ever evolving, relying on my doctrines to do the rest for Descore, it allowed you to link America to the domain I so generously gave-”

“You sent me to the worst planet possible for changing my mind about the use of magic to keep the Continent in statis, and then proceeded to write me into the arbitrary holy books you created as a devil figure.”

“To be fair, Kerubiel did that. He has been known for being somewhat...vindictive. Do you realize, though, how dangerous knowledge is in human hands? I couldn’t destroy the first or second worlds, but it was my responsibility to make sure that if there had to be suffering, and making a perfect world is impossible, you know that, that it was controlled suffering. That said, I am sorry for demonizing you. I assumed that it would be more necessary than it was.”

“Can I go back?”

“Why should I let you? You already tried to subvert everything.”

“I created a death knight out of a criminal from Georgia, and she’s probably made her way to the first planet through my teleportation portal. I made a mess, I should clean it up.”

“On one condition.”


	8. Despotism

**KRI-RAKKAN:**

It was probably a bad idea to send Kri-Rakkan to the emergency crisis meeting between the Solar Republic of Tenna’s Speaker J. Argentum, Artemis’ General Chevalier, and, from the Kri-Tokha Empire of the Blue Core, Kri-Rakkan. Unlike General Chevalier or Speaker Argentum, Kri-Rakkan didn’t actually rule his nation. Also, it would probably be more accurate to call the Kri-Tokha a massive flock of millions of corvids with crude hand-like appendages at the bend of their wings, ruled by their Blue Core, an artificial intelligence built on principles that were both completely insane to humanity, and able to somehow guide every single Kri-Tokha through their ubiquitous cybernetic enhancements.

While Tenna liked to claim that equal participation in their free market made all Tennans equal, and Artemis liked to say that being a military organization with some trappings of government, its citizens were equal by definition, a fact probably more true than Tenna’s argument, given that Tenna was the only state of the three where positions of power could be gained by strategically murdering political opponents, and where the hierarchy of the State Quintetrarchy of the Highest Angel meant that most people, by definition, were not equal, but Artemis was still a military first and foremost, with a chain of command that extended into civilian life.

Only the Kri-Tokha, the corvids without the trappings of the strange ape creatures, could say for sure that everyone under their flag was equal, or close to it. All were equal under the beautiful chaos of the Blue Core’s guidance. But back to why Kri-Rakkan should probably not have been sent to the smooth, white room with the luxurious couches and rounded white furniture, floating through space as part of the massive AFS  _ 112,  _ the Artemis fleet ship the size of what was once called Iceland, which served as the headquarters of Artemis’ operations.

Kri-Rakkan was a dick. 

It wasn’t quite that simple, the cybernetically-enhanced bird-like alien lacked the organ, for one. These days, most Kri-Tokha were grown in spawn eggs, and genetically modified before hatching in various ways, in a complicated program of eugenics overseen by Orange Core, a subordinate AI of Blue Core dedicated to these things.

Figuratively, though, he was a dick. A staunch Kri-Tokha supremacist, a warmonger, and, worst of all, an activist, Kri-Rakkan was a strange figure in politics indeed. Not a diplomat but a CX Blind Eye, the highest agent of the secret police organization known only as CX, Kri-Rakkan had been stranded due to a ship crash on an advanced but not spacefaring planet full of fluid-bodied undersea creatures. When he was finally found, the rescue ship was spotted by the SRT, who proceeded to realize that a group of sentient cephalopods in underwater cities could develop into something that might threaten them in their genetically-enhanced lifespans, so they dispatched a scout ship armed with thirty missiles of their kind to irradiate the oceans and murder anything on the surface. He had heard the news later, back on Blue Nest, their original home planet so long ago, and the home of the mighty Blue Core. The whole experience soured him on humanity.

He returned home to campaign for increased rights of lesser species besides humanity, and to try and get Green Core to do something, anything about the rampant speciescide that humanity seemed to be so obsessed with. They were split, now. Weak! It would be a simple matter to attack. However, his organizing of these campaigns, while completely ineffectual at convincing anyone on Blue Nest to do anything, did convince Purple Core, the CX overseer, that the CX cadet would do well in a more organization-based role. So he was rapidly promoted, and in this respect he proved himself capable enough to be eventually made a Blind Eye. Then Blue Core insisted he go to talk to the humans about something or another.

The man in the simple tan military uniform with the white armband looked at the Speaker, and down at Kri-Rakkan, who was of average height for his species at one and a half meters. The humans made fun of them. Called them “birds”. Who invented the heat rays and hard-light shielding, worm-food? Huh? Who? It wasn’t you, with your primitive culture and worship of a god clearly based on our species. Angels.  _ Winged  _ humans. Doesn’t that sound familiar?

“Blind Eye Kri-Rakkan. Have you been listening to anything we’ve been saying?” General Chevalier rolled his eyes. Kri-Rakkan responded indignantly with the sort of weird half-cawing voice you can only get from a genetically-modified avian. “Of course. You were discussing that two planets of sufficient complexity had been discovered to warrant a temporary ceasefire to discuss spheres of influence. You mentioned that some soldiers of yours under Brigadier Harrison had begun to interact with...Crossroads City, you called it? What a stupid name. And they found what the Tenn-ants would call extrasensory heresy. Because they’re not very smart. But apparently the people in Crossroads City are? Is there anything interesting there?”

“What did Speaker Argentum find?”

“What, is this an examination? Fine. Speaker Argentum found some primitive society that had completely fallen to heresy. His words. Heresy. We should exterminate your kind. It’s not like you’re doing much good to the galaxy.”

Argentum, the oldest man in an ornately-patterned Tennan jumpsuit, looked down at the Kri-Tokha with something resembling disappointment. Not anger. Just disappointment. “The troubling thing, dear Blind Eye, is that the primitive society had completely unexpected technologies in one of their provinces. Technologies that corresponded to what General Chevalier claims he heard about in this “Crossroads City”. Worse, the technologies resembled early Tennan technologies, and “Crossroads City” was located on what looked like a double of Tenna. Inhabitants called it “Earth”, the technical name for Tenna. Harrison is greatly alarmed. If you must know, we struck the mysterious planet with several warheads. It was precise and humane.”

Kri-Rakkan covered his face in a black wing in annoyance. “Okay. Fine. Artemis gets the weird mirror of your horrible planet, and you can have the radioactive husk you’ve probably turned that rock into. Why do you need me here?”

“We think your society is responsible for these abominations. Advanced terraforming. Planetary creation. Near-total genetic mastery. AI able to modify an organic mind. All things required, all exclusively Kri-Tokha technologies, and closely-guarded secrets. Is this some sort of joke to your kind?”

“...I promise you, whatever this is, it’s not that. I’ll go and organize a search to see if anything points to a Kri-Tokha being responsible. It’s not like I have enough datawork to fill out, or anything. You know, we could destroy this ship and Tenna if we wanted to.”

General Chevalier laughed. “Then who would your superior species sell heat rays and genetically-engineered pets to?”

**DESPOT:**

She put as much ammunition as she could into an old olive messenger bag, slung the bag over her shoulder, cradled her assault rifle, and exited the impromptu armory, going to the pseudo-futuristic elevator. Ground floor. Bland music begun to play as the skeleton slowly descended in the elevator. Floor 34, 33, 32, 31... Floor 15.

Despot looked at the rifle in her hands, felt the bag hanging off her clavicle, and wrapped her fingers around the barrel of the gun, crushing it. She let the bag slide off of her clavicle, down her humerus and radius, falling to the ground with a loud thump. 12.

No guns. Everyone used a gun. Bridget used guns. Bridget was a common criminal. Despot was the one true superhuman. Foxhunter, Rogue? Shallow imitations. Humans playing at divinity. 3.

She stopped musing about this when the elevator door opened up, and begun to walk out of the gold and brass lobby of the building, the doorman looking at the walking skeleton in something resembling horror. She turned her skull to look at him, and begun to walk towards him. “Oh, you don’t recognize me. It’s me. Bridget MacAskill. The one who lives on Floor 34. The one who knows Dr. Teague. Except-”

She grabbed his neck and raised him into the air, slamming him onto a granite desk. He yelled out in pain as his spine snapped. “Except I’m bullshitting you.” She took the bleeding, broken, paralyzed man’s hand, and effortlessly dragged him across the wood floor like a child dragging a rag doll, a trail of blood following the two. “Bridget was shot. I’m so much more.” She kept dragging him, now the barely-alive man’s face scraped against the concrete, and the skeleton turned her skull to see that a group of armed people in red were squaring off against the police. Gang war. Not her business.

Shockingly, the skeleton dragging the bleeding person was not exactly troubled by either side, and people instinctively shied away from her, or just ran away. This all had a point. She reminded herself this, and the doorman kept coughing up blood and trying to speak, but he simply could not get the words out. 

Eventually, after some tedious walking, the death knight entered the military district, stopping at a checkpoint with two soldiers in urban-pattern camouflage Army Combat Uniforms (The National Guard had long since needed Army help). One was a man about her size, the other was a thin, blonde woman who looked sort of like someone she couldn’t really place. She pointed at the man, who had “Williams” stitched on his jacket neatly, over his heart. “You. I want your uniform.”

“What?”

“Strip down and give me the uniform, and look at the doorman.”

“I don’t care.”

Williams raised his gun and began to open fire, bullet after bullet slamming into the bones that made up the death knight’s body, some even going straight between them, before ripping the woman’s face off with incredible speed, the chunk of flesh, cartilage, and crushed bone in her hand deposited at the man’s feet with a thunk. “Why do you want it?”

“I’ve graciously decided to, instead of killing everybody for a passing joke, go on an actual warpath.This world’s my canvas, now, so I’m going to paint. In this case, that means claiming my throne and making my mark on it. So I’d like to wear something dignified for a military leader, until I trade up.” She then punched a hole straight through his face, showing that her magically-enhanced bones were more durable than normal bone, and noticed the counter in her head tick up one point. Good, especially since a death around her granted her an extra life, but only direct kills fed the magical reactions which let her move around and think with life force. She knew all of this intimately. Oddly. “I’ve decided I’m willing to take it off of your corpse.” She kicked his body idly and tossed the doorman with one arm through the air, where the barely-alive person soared. She’d kind of hoped to be able to use the doorman. Eh, that just didn’t come up.

**LENA WEDEKIND-TEAGUE:**

She ran towards the portal only to look through it, to see the apocalyptic remains of what Dixie’s memories said were supposed to be there. To hear Adalwolfa’s voice.  _ Meine liebchen, that’s a nuclear testing site. Like on the TV in Utah. Stay away. _ She heeded her aunt’s voice and stopped, looking through the portal. 

She heard crying. It was soft, and clearly suppressed, but someone in her head was crying.  _ “Fuck this!”  _ Dixie yelled.  _ “Give me control! We’re going to look for her! Give me control!” _

The weavewolf turned away from the portal and begun to walk out of the apartment.

**DESPOT:**

It had been about forty minutes, and a skeleton in a common soldier’s outfit covered in blood and bits of entrails stood in front of Lieutenant Colonel Jackson Lin, in the latter man’s office. A Machiavelli quote and Matthew 6:34. The first was, “ _ Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved?  _ **_It may be answered that one should wish to be both_ ** _ , but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, is much safer to be feared than loved, when, of the two, either must be dispensed with. _ ” 

As for the second, framed above the Machiavelli quote (She assumed the bolding was his addition)?  _ “ _ _...do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Today has enough trouble of its own.”  _ Despot stared at the man after taking in the prominent displays on his wall. He spoke first. “...Who are you? What the hell are you?”

“I was once Bridget MacAskill.”

“Really?” He didn’t seem frightened of her, which startled her, given that she had murdered soldier after soldier to get to this room, tripped alarm after alarm. “Well, you should have called ahead of time. I could have seen if I could get you an appointment. Probably not in the near future, but you know how things are these days.” He chuckled. “Seriously, though, Teague sent me a file two years ago to show you if you ever got this far without her and the thin psychopath you work with.”

“A...file?”

“Yeah. A video.” Despot couldn’t quite believe it, but curiosity got the better of her. Making her mark on the world in a more organized, dare she say  _ despotic  _ fashion could wait. “Show me, and make it quick before I disembowel you.” Lin shrugged in complete apathy at the death threat and opened up his laptop. He turned it around on his desk, and a slightly younger Dr. Teague begun to speak, the backdrop being an unfamiliar room with the homey but bland trappings of a hotel room. Despot suspected that Teague actually booked a hotel room just to record this missive. 

“Bridget. If you’re listening to this, it means that you’ve come for your coup alone. Or revolution. I’m honestly not sure. Regardless, I know that you’re alone, because I recorded multiple videos, and if Dixie were here, you would see the video meant for both of you. If I were here, you wouldn’t watch anything at all, obviously. Anyway, here’s the thing. There’s more than just magic and Utah superpowers in this world. There are alien societies beyond the stars which will come to Earth to conquer or destroy it. One has already come, to Crossroads City, of course, under the pseudonym of NeuroTech. That’s actually the space confederacy called Artemis, but they seem pretty benign. What’s important are the crazy space humans calling themselves the Solar Republic of Tenna, who like to destroy other species out of paranoia, and the Kri-Tokha, a bunch of space crows who worship technology that’s more or less magic to us, despite not being actually magic. How do I know all of this? I have a contact going by Minerva in Crossroads City, and a detective named DeSanto there who keeps tabs on Artemis agents in the city. He’s weird. “Genderfluid” or something, and has mind control powers but is too much of a bitch to use them. Gets good information, though.

“Why did I keep this from you? It’s simple. I’m going to make a Superman reference, because I know you are just so proud of your love for those movies. You’re Clark Kent. I needed to train you to be the savior of this planet. Dixie ain’t gonna do it. She’s dead. Also, she was an alcoholic and kind of average. You were the favorite, I’m not gonna lie. I needed to keep you safe. You didn’t need to know about your destiny then, now you do. Oh, and if you want proof, you’re going to have to trust me. This is your chance, Bridget. You wanted to save this city by ruling it, now you gotta get this world ready to fight off its doom. Whether it wants to be prepared or not. The greater good. It’s your fight, now, Bridget. DeSanto doesn’t have the balls to do it, Minerva doesn’t have the sheer power, Clockstopper doesn’t have the ambition for it. It’s all on you.”

Deep down, Despot knew. This was what her life had been leading up to. This was her destiny. She was the hero, this was her quest. More than just making a mark. She was going to save her damned planet. Claim the throne.

**CLOCKSTOPPER:**

_ It seemed as though Dr. Teague had managed to cheat death. She had been teleported away from Essin to her apartment, just in time to avoid death by nuclear blast, but just before Clockstopper would enter the apartment, a woman in a long coat wearing thin rimless sunglasses, her scraggly hair everywhere suddenly appeared in the room. _

_ In truth, Clockstopper was already there. Retroactively, she could be anywhere. It was one of those powers with the potential for unintended consequences, but as far as superpowers go, nearly complete control over time was pretty nice. So, she retroactively put herself in Teague’s apartment, slowed down time for herself, pointed her gun at Teague’s knee, pulled the trigger, sped up time enough so the bullet would leave the chamber, put another bullet in the air this way, this one in front of Teague’s heart, and sped up time. _

_ The bullets whizzed through the air, and the old woman finally croaked. Just like that, Clockstopper wasn’t there anymore.  _

**RAEKIN KLYNNET:**

The Greatest Wizard in the World and god of Magic awoke on his floating wooden throne, the edges of the throne holding powerful crystals. The noise that brought him out of his slumber was a loud crack, and his hall lacked the servants, automata, and magitechnology that was so typical of it, instead being a ruined mockery of what it once was. Smashed power crystals, automata rusted and dead, banners faded or outright fallen on the marble floor...

He had been asleep for far too long. It was odd. Liches didn’t actually fall asleep. He knew this better than most, being a lich. So what could it be? Probably best not to contemplate. He slowly got up and walked through the ruins of a once-great palace of wonders, of water that fell upwards and machines that could create endless food or drink, of shining orbs of metal and flame that now rolled on the ground like extinguished coals. He exited his hall and entered the castle courtyard, to find a massive device in the rough center, half-embedded in the yard. “ _ Comprehend. Disassemble.”  _ With the broad power accessible only to a mighty mage, Raekin disassembled what he now knew to be called a “M900 Orbital Bombardment Weapon”, and understood how it worked and why this particular M900 did not work.

Raekin Klynnet now understood nuclear theory.

**CLOCKSTOPPER:**

At the moment, Clockstopper happened to be sitting in the Crossroads City Mystic Glade. Sure, she could be anywhere, but honestly, it was just tiring to be her. Being a time-bending superhuman working for and dating a ruthless power broker was honestly kind of tough on a person. She sipped her beer and watched the dancing and the fucking, while the woman in the beautiful Renaissance Faire outfit begun to speak.

How did it get like this? She adjusted her coat, which was a bit uncomfortable, and thought to herself. Well, she knew how it got like this. Bad economy. Ultra-right terrorism. State of emergency. Some bitch comes out of nowhere and starts up a pretty nice club... She would go to the Scorpion, but she’d heard references to the owner of that classy joint drinking the blood of her patrons. She wouldn’t put it past the weirdos in her city.

She winced at the bubblegum pink and blue laser lights as they swept the dance floor, some manic piece on electric violin with heavy synth bits underneath playing, today’s band frantically making music like some kind of desperate and chaotic ritual.  _ “You’re just an evil twin, Clockstopper. I know who you really are. I’ve looked in your mind.” _

DeSanto had said it to her, the last time they met. It was at this very club. A meeting to discuss terms. She wanted to threaten him and his psychotic partner into staying out of Minerva’s business, they probably wanted to take her out. Or maybe DeSanto wanted to come to some agreement. Who knew?

Evil twin.

This wasn’t Star Trek. There wasn’t some Terran Empire in the sky containing morally warped versions of everyone. There was Artemis, but they were kind of a harmless open secret. The beer tasted like moose piss and she threw the beer bottle into the trash. The gun at her hip, the pistol, it bugged her. She didn’t like guns.

  
They didn’t feel right. She preferred her spatha.


	9. Everything's Just as You Remember

**TAYLOR:**

_ The M650 hit her, but she didn’t die. No, something triggered inside of her. Triggered. She didn’t even know the word “trigger” existed. Nor did she know that the thing that should have killed her was called a M650, and yet, she did know all of these things. Her soul, a blinding maroon light, was now above what looked like many chains of large rooms, each containing a single scene. Tyrrus and her’s first meeting, the Foxhunter and Dixie in the trophy room... _

_ She didn’t know all of these things. _

_ But she did. _

_ She was above all of these chains, now, in this brownish, hazy void, and could focus on any one link to change whatever she liked. As long as it was possible, she could alter the timeline (The collective name for all of these chains, which she now knew), to make it happen. There was a much weaker time-controlling Hopebearer (So that was what these “superhuman” powers were supposed to be called, although both names were equally strange to her) in another world, another city. _

_ Sloane Collins. The Clockstopper. _

_ Taylor begun to change her past to suit that woman’s. She wasn’t a Paladin anymore. She would be an assassin pointedly not in a relationship with “Minerva”, merely friends (That was an important change), with time-controlling powers at the top of the Crossroads City hierarchy. She would have gone to Jackson High School, and later tried Fillmore University before developing her powers in a moment of extreme danger (Car crash), and dropping out to make a living doing what she was best at. _

_ All of her memories with Tyrrus, Natrix, Baines, and the monsters from the other side of Baines’ portal? _

_ As if they’d never happened. Only she’d know. _

**HIGHEST ANGEL:**

_ In front of the Highest Angel was the latest dead paladin to judge. Natrix. An infamously monstrous paladin, one who deserved the worst a god of Good and Law could provide.The Highest Angel’s hands begun to glow with dancing flame. No. Flame was imperfect. Artificial by comparison. This was...It was not quite flame. Too perfect to be flame. Flame was this thing’s shadow. “I can inform your friends or loved ones of your current situation, if you so please. I’m dearly afraid you will not be able to contact them yourself when you return to the planet.” _

_ “I want to know what happened to Paladin Taylor.” Natrix asked, almost pleading. “She’s just disappeared. If she’s dead, her and I didn’t always get along, but I’d at least like to know....Great and Highest of all angels.” _

_ “Your bootlicking is as insincere as possible, and no. I’m afraid that even I do not know where she is.” _

_ “Bullshit!” _

_ “It is as if she disappeared off of the face of the Continent.” _

**TYRRUS:**

_ “Kingsson Tyrrus, Kingsson Tyrrus! Summoner Natrix wishes to speak with you! She insists on it! She says the exalted angel Kerubiel says it is of some importance and that you should come to see her at once! A matter of good and evil, life and death!” Tyrrus opened his eyes to see some sort of messenger, a thin man with a crooked nose and bruises all over his body. _

**SLOANE COLLINS:**

_ The office of DeSanto and Brown, Private Detectives was not supposed to be like this. Sure, it was dingy, a temple to rust and squalor, and she could see DeSanto on their knees, screaming, along with Dolores Brown, more commonly known as the nuclear superhuman Gadget, standing there with a baseball bat, glaring cynically at the object of DeSanto’s terror. Why Gadget would need a baseball bat, she had no idea. _

_ Her name was Sloane Collins. Also known as Clockstopper. A dramatic name for a minor-league superhuman. The two detectives she saw out of the corner of her eye, having temporarily stopped time to break into the office, were staring (in Gadget’s case), or screaming and crying in the vague direction of what looked like a monster flanked by scorpion-men, with one flabby arm, one mechanical wooden arm, and writing burnt into her skin in some nonexistent language. Behind her was the portal that presumably this monster had used, out into a rainbow abyss. _

_ Gadget turned to look at her. “Bitch. Not on the clock. That means I get to beat you to death. Use your powers. Pause things for a bit. You know, until you overheat yourself and collapse like a fuckin’ loser.” _

_ She ran towards the rainbow portal, shunting the monster away. The sound like a microwave enveloped her hearing completely, and she closed her eyes. _

**NATRIX:**

_ She didn’t need to look back as her body glided across the ground. She held her hand at her side. Tyrrus started to walk closer to her, and he whispered something, his hand giving off light as if it were a torch. “When you become the most vile wizard on the Continent, are you going to try and hunt down Taylor to kill her?” She didn’t sound afraid, nor curious. It was as if she already knew his answer, and simply wanted to confirm it. _

_ “I would hate to have to have my monsters eat you, Tyrrus.” She said, completely seriously. “If you try and find her, I will make Kerubiel try to run out of my head in sheer disgust at my retribution. If you think that it’ll make some great story of your evil by turning on your friends, then reconsider. Taylor is gone.” _

**TAYLOR:**

_ One of the advantages of this plan would be that Vanessa Teague, Julianne DeWitt, and Bridget MacAskill would have never seen her when they captured the now-alone Tyrrus. _

**ADALWOLFA WEDEKIND:**

_ Adalwolfa Wedekind sat in front of the old camera in her aging apartment, speaking into it. “Meine liebchen. I’m sending you this video for when you start to worry about whether or not you’re doing the right thing. As the title implies. As your aunt, and honestly as someone who should have been your guardian, I think that if you haven’t figured it out, it’s time you were told it. Even if I’m dead when you watch this. There are no good people who kill. While killing the occasional person might be necessary morally, chances are that if you’re killing over ten of them a month, your morality is completely off. I thought about what Teague said, about my plans to cleanse Cassidy. She was right. I have become a monster. I couldn’t get her words out of my head. I’ve lost myself in the violence. Please, please, please don’t become a crusader. Previously, I thought of Teague as being the incarnation of all evil. She is still a monster, of course, but she seems to believe her child abuse, murder, fraud, and torture are acceptable. In other words, she just at some point didn’t realize she was becoming a monster, and at some point she couldn’t see anything but the deluded worldview she’s created for herself. Lena, everything I’ve taught you has come from a broken world-view. You deserve better. I love you. _

**TYRRUS:**

_ Tyrrus hung alone in the cellar, with only the fucking doctor in front of him with the blowtorch. She sighed melodramatically. “You know, I used to have an...enemy. Let’s say “enemy”. She had this belief that all people who were evil needed to be punished with death. Sure, she didn’t start out that way, and it was only after a few years of those things piling up, mixed with some attacks on the lives of people she cared about, that she came to that conclusion fully, but eventually she started to kill children in her hometown. Probably because she thought they’d grow up like their parents. I didn’t like her, but you know what she taught me?” _

_ “Don’t be an insane idiot?” _

_ “If you’re going to kill someone, do it quickly, and have a good reason.” She raised the blowtorch up to his face and began to melt off skin and roast eyeballs. “But sometimes I ignore my own advice.” _

**TAYLOR:**

_ As it happened, her change meant that there was no paladin for Bridget to want to duel, so that brute stayed on her side of the portal for good. Saving her life. Well, her life wasn’t worth much, anyway, alive or dead. _

_ It probably wouldn’t matter. _

**BRIDGET MacASKILL:**

_ So this was how she died. She stood there, zip-tied and propped up against the wall of some sick trophy room, Dixie as mobile (ankle and hand cuffs). The Foxhunter held Bridget’s sword with some difficulty. “Respect for the fallen.” The gas-masked rat rasped. Bridget let the sun from the window bathe her body. _

_ “Strike me down, Foxhunter, and I’ll be more powerful than you can ever imagine.” Dixie said with a smirk. Bridget wished she could elbow her in the ribs. This was not the time for childish things. She had seen that movie once. Disliked it. Found it simplistic. Dixie kept talking. “You don’t want to kill either of us, Foxfucker.” _

_ “....Ew.” The Foxhunter stepped back a bit in disgust. “Why don’t I want to kill you? You’re both horrible people. I found a child’s corpse by your building.” _

_ “Nazi child.” Bridget interjected. _

_ “Irrelevant.” The Foxhunter continued. “One good reason for me to go back on everything I believe in to spare the lives of you two unrepentant murderers.” She held Bridget’s sword, before dropping it and going for a lighter machete. “Christ, how do you wield that thing?” _

_ Dixie laughed again. “She trains with it, and Adalwolfa emailed me a video in February that you’ll want to see.” _

_ “Adalwolfa?” The Foxhunter tilted her head a bit. “...You know, don’t you? I could probably have been more secretive. I had other things to focus on.” _

_ “Lena, you were a moody bitch obsessed with Adalwolfa’s crazy philosophy and the Punisher. Oh, and you’re practically the same height, and I saw cigarette butts around the entrance to your plantation. Seriously. You are terrible at this whole “secret identity” thing.” _

_ The Foxhunter punched Dixie in the face, Dixie’s head slamming against the wood wall with a thwack, but the superhero left the room temporarily, returning with a cheap laptop. “You. Password. I already know your email address, for obvious reasons.” _

_ Bridget sighed. “You gave her a concussion. I know it, though.”  _

_ At that, the Foxhunter put the laptop on the ground and began to chop at Dixie’s face, only gradually working down to her throat to stop the constant screaming and bleeding. The Foxhunter slashed her throat, and begun to take her prize, Dixie’s hand. Bridget wasn’t particularly impressed. “Password’s “molotovcocktail”.” She tried to squirm, but the Foxhunter kicked her in the face with one of those heavy boots, and it hurt.  _

_ The Foxhunter begun to access the email, and Bridget heard the video play. “Lena, everything I’ve taught you has come from a broken world-view. You deserve better. I love you.” Bridget watched Lena drop her machete and remove the gas mask and hood, stunned by the video. _

_ Bridget could not give less of a shit. _

**DESPOT:**

_ There were three ways a death knight could, for lack of a better word, die. One. Running out of deaths to fuel the basic necromantic functions of the creature. Two, running out of accrued “lives”, in the video-gamey sense. Three, dying in a fair duel, and she knew her nature meant she couldn’t refuse a “fair” duel, whatever that meant. That was the most unclear of the things she knew about herself. _

_ Despot, very much alive, begun to walk out of the military instillation, though the video that she had been watching simply ceased to exist. It was playing once, now it wasn’t. Lieutenant Colonel Lin, previously so relaxed, now seemed furious, drawing a pistol and shooting at Despot. Not that she cared.  _

_ Regardless, she had her mission, and a Lieutenant Colonel somehow didn’t seem to be the best person to have under her thumb. Anyone who could erase things from existence seemed like someone to get to know. Buy them a drink. _

_ She turned around and crushed Lin’s face in with a bony hand, rooting through his clothing to find his wallet. Now she could pay for one. _

**FIRST SUMMONER:**

_ Crying. Speak? No. Unworthy wretch. Berate? No. Unworthy. Skinless. Unworthy. Turn away. Skinslord desires better weavewolf. Speak? No. Eloquence nice. Speaking on loan. _

**COMMANDANT ACACIA SEAGLASS:**

_ “Didn’t they teach you anything at the temples, Marsh? Nightmares don’t go away to bombs. Nightmares need to be fought with faith and devotion. As for Essin, I was getting to that. Two M650-A1s. The radiation should also get rid of those deluded colonists who worship the same god we do. Shame. On the other hand, if we allow any society to develop too far, especially a heretical extrasensory one, we could end up with a serious problem in five hundred years, and I don’t want to deal with that. It’s strange that these beings seem so human, and worship our gods, but my guess is that they’re a test from Leliel to convince us to stay our hands. She shall learn that the servants of the Highest Angel do not falter in our duty. Marsh, get the targeting preparations ready, Graphite, get me a drink. Europan Death Whiskey. Highest Angel’s will, strike down the heretics.” _

**SLOANE COLLINS:**

_ She couldn’t see anything, her eyes had been burnt up as she hung in the void. However, eventually, it spat her out, and she felt air on her skin. Air. Thank God. Then the air turned to fire, and she was vaporized. _

**LELIEL:**

She looked down from Heaven through a wispy pool of clouds at her chosen rogue Hopebringer. The Highest Angel had given specific humans special powers with the intent that, should things go poorly, the humans of the first Earth would have heroes to help them and exemplars to look up to. Considering that the powers were not exactly creative in nature, including morally questionable tools such as mind control, all distributed at random, Leliel questioned what kind of salvation the Highest Angel had in mind. After the creation of the second world, where the Highest Angel decided that no Hopebringers would be necessary, as he would unite and improve the planet himself for a time, they scrapped the idea.

The third planet could not stand to have a single Hopebringer. They might completely overthrow the delicate system of obsessive wizards ruling over small territories. So, naturally, Leliel chose a Paladin to be one. Hopebringers weren’t born with their powers. No, to make them feel a kinship with the rest of humankind, they were only to discover their powers upon experiencing an event that would otherwise kill them.

This Paladin was Paladin Taylor, who had informed her from the future that she would be given the powers by Leliel, and Leliel felt a strange compulsion to make Paladin Taylor the single most powerful being imaginable. She rationalized it later, said that it was simply because Paladin Taylor was dependable and would probably act as the anti-Highest Angel trump card she might need.

The atomic blast didn’t kill her, of course. It merely gave her her abilities. She was aware that Taylor had managed to retroactively edit her life to be a first-planet Hopebringer and killer known as Clockstopper, due to Taylor’s future self telling her as such, but the implications of this she was told not to think too much about. She may have been one of the angels who advised in the creation of three planets, but even she still feared the future. So she kept up willful ignorance. 

**GADGET:**

She looked at the sorry woman in front of her. Shorn of the black duster and mirrored sunglasses ripped from  _ The Matrix,  _ completely naked, and forced to stay frozen in place by the person in front of her, Taylor was fucking pathetic. “She isn’t crying. Are you doing that?” The taller woman turned to the person in 1940s detective garb. They responded back with “No. All she’s trying to do is to reset time so that she can get a drop on us. I’m able to stop it with my mind-affecting powers, but rest assured that the chorus of ignored warnings she’s getting about all sorts of things is giving me a headache. Oh, and there’s something you should know.

DeSanto and Gadget’s office was a study in opposites. Some parts were extremely clean and neatly organized, such as the many books on display or the collectable antique cigar boxes, and those parts tended to be DeSanto’s. Gadget, meanwhile, had a habit of leaving bubblegum wrappers and cigarette butts everywhere, and her papers were scattered around most of the office, the corner that had been cleaned out to hold Taylor an exception. “What is it?” She held her aluminum bat and glanced at the woman on the floor, the latter in a fetal position. It seemed DeSanto’d stopped her from doing a lot. This was the god-baby they’d told her about.

“You weren’t originally called Gadget, or Dolores Brown. You were someone else. A summoner in some fantasy realm, and, like I said before, she’s become her own evil twin. How far the stoic paladin has fallen.” DeSanto said, the white light that came with their powers partially enveloping both them and Taylor. They spoke as though they knew she would find the statement absurd.

“What? Show me.”

DeSanto put a finger on Gadget’s temple, and she saw the full life of Paladin Natrix, from her birth, to her childhood (relatively good), to the very impressive and suitable for Gadget spree of murders (the rapes were less of her interest), to the journey that she’d initiated, to her cool powers, and finally to her sudden disappearance shortly after Taylor’s, where some angel god had coincidentally decided to create for her false memories and make her a superhuman when Natrix was sent to Crossroads City. Probably Taylor’s machinations. She also saw what Summoner Natrix could actually do.

And she was fucking livid. She raised her bat and cracked it across Taylor’s back with both hands, before taking one hand off, enveloping it in fire, and branding Taylor’s back with her handprint. “You stole my life from me, stole my armies, all for what?” She burned another handprint into Taylor’s back, then grabbed the time master’s hand and set it ablaze. “You’re not going to go back and undo this. Why the hell would you do this to me? We were friends!” She broke another vertebra with a loud crack. “Well, we were. Now I’m mostly a different person. Thanks to you hijacking a god. DeSanto. Let her talk.”

DeSanto’s light faded a bit, and Taylor responded. “Because we were friends. I wanted someone else to be with me when I changed the timeline. I changed more than you can imagine. I wanted stability, and I wasn’t taking a former jailor with me to the first planet.”

“You selfish piece of shit.” Gadget prepared to break open Taylor’s skull. 

 


	10. Megaton

**DeSANTO:**

They watched Gadget raise the bat, and made a quick, impulsive decision. The white light emitted from their hands, and DeSanto begun to root through Taylor and Gadget’s brains at the same time. If they didn’t make this radical choice, Gadget would murder Taylor, and the police would be on their backs, as this was off-the-clock, so she’d be a murderer, not a detective, according to Crossroads City law. So the both of them had to be subdued. They wondered what the person who woke up this morning would think. The detective who was appalled at the implications of entering someone’s mind and modifying it. The detective who would never, not after Fillmore University. Until the time came when, apparently, they did decide to enter and modify someone else’s mind.

“Gadget. Taylor. Stay there. Do whatever I say to do.” They didn’t want to do this. Really. It was just what had to be done. Otherwise either a reprehensible human being who apparently had all of the violence and desperation of a person on a death world would be free to get them both jailed, or worse.

That, or the god-baby of Time itself would use her powers, in this hypothetical scenario, to create even more chaos. DeSanto had to test out this, somehow. Make sure that it still worked. Powers didn’t seem to have a logic to them. What worked on Taylor’s one-track mind might not work on the far more clever Gadget. “Gadget. Would you mind getting me a soda from the Salt Lake Mart? Dr. Pepper.” They drew their leather wallet from a pants pocket and handed Gadget a five-dollar bill.

**GADGET:**

Gadget felt her mind be probed around, invaded. She didn’t quite know what they were doing in there, but she did know that it could be anything. She dropped the bat and stood up, taking the bill. She begun to walk out onto the glistening streets of Crossroads City. The sun had begun to rise, a light covering of snow had just dusted the streets and the tops of the relatively small buildings, and she enveloped her hand in flame to keep herself warm, holding the hand close to her chest to keep passers-by from seeing it as a threat.

Gadget was not Natrix. Except that she was. She thought about this a bit as her boots hit the snow on the sidewalk. Natrix was a violent and reprehensible person because that was how she developed in a repressive and backwards society where she received little oversight. Gadget was a violent and reprehensible person because that was what Taylor remembered of her, and she wanted to preserve the essence of her friend, presumably. So, Gadget, despite being in a completely different situation to Natrix, acted in a similar manner. 

She passed by the local Thai food place and sniffed the aroma of the warm food as she passed by. How much of Gadget was Gadget, she wondered? She was fine with Natrix, Natrix seemed like a similar person to her. Was she Natrix all along, and she just needed to remember that? Was she now a different person due to the fake memories giving her a different life experience?

Could DeSanto read every little thought in this vein she was thinking about?

She honestly had no answers to any question but the last, to which the answer was that they probably could. At any rate, there was one quality that she had, as Natrix. She could bend and ignore rules with ease. In this case, DeSanto had put her under a compulsion to go and get a Dr. Pepper from the Salt Lake Mart, which was a block away. They were probably not monitoring Gadget’s mind too closely, in order to focus on keeping the much more dangerous and thoroughly adversarial Taylor down, so that meant that as long as she didn’t do anything obviously counter to DeSanto’s whims on her way to getting the soda, she’d be fine. However, if she took too long in getting the soda, it would be suspicious, prompting questioning and perhaps a further mind-probing. 

She entered the Salt Lake Mart, one of the more recognizable international chains of convenience stores after the rise of those patriotic lunatics. Crossroads City, being the headquarters of a world religion and a large city in its own right, was spared much of the destruction, especially with the Mormons splitting into various factions, of which the more radical mostly coalesced around the founding of “Deseret”, in the south of Utah, while the north was held by the more moderate or US supporting Mormons and non-Mormon members of the state. This meant that Salt Lake Marts suddenly began to make their way to Deseret and California, especially once the US started funneling money to businesses in Utah as a way of trying to stabilize the region. Salt Lake Marts were international by technicality, yes, but international.

At any rate, our intrepid “hero” approached the refrigerator to take the bottle of russet drink and begun to think on what she had learned from DeSanto’s knowledge-dump. Not necessarily what could be used to her advantage in a potential conflict with them, as that would be unacceptably adversarial. Just a normal inventory of advantages.

**DeSANTO:**

DeSanto thought to himself. Genderfluidity. Having a vagina but identifying alternately as male or agender (not identifying with a gender at all). Certainly complex for others to keep track of. Well, it wasn’t too hard and people would have to make do. That wasn’t the thing DeSanto was thinking about, however. No, it was about the current situation. The fact was that Taylor would eventually have to eat, use the toilet, or otherwise exist as a human being. Then the mind control would have to be loosened, and it wasn’t as though DeSanto was unaware that people could theoretically work around the commands given via mind control when it wasn’t all-consuming.

So either Taylor died or she waited until DeSanto forgot to tell her not to attack him or use her powers, and Taylor proceeded to, at best, write him out of existence. At worst, she might just rewrite the entire world in rage. Or worlds. He wasn’t throwing out the multiverse theory.

So Taylor had to die, however, there was a catch. There might be a need for someone able to change time. If a time-traveling superhero existed in 1930s Germany, for example, there might not have been such unimaginable tragedy and horror. Or, to use a more recent example, had someone engineered the failure of the Ted Kennedy/Julian C. Dixon 1980 presidential campaign, the desperate hope of the angered and frankly somewhat reactionary left wing might not have, by consistently prodding a very irritable section of the country, created the infection which would fester into the present state of the United States and Deseret. 

So the point stood. Taylor had to go, but someone else had to take on the ability to modify the timeline or control time, if necessary. That someone couldn’t be him. He looked at her, frozen in her pathetic ball, and winced. He wouldn’t be able to resist using that power frivolously. He doubted anyone would. It was the closest thing to omnipotence. 

What would Paladin Taylor, the loyal soldier think of this woman? It was a strange joke, her twisting herself into a blackened mirror of herself due to a horrible gift. No time for musing. Who could he ensure wouldn’t use the power for anything too harmful? He couldn’t give it to a good person, they’d go and try and fix everything. He couldn’t give it to someone ambitious and evil, such as Dr. Teague. Sure, the woman was competent and known for her skill at keeping a status quo, but she was far from trustworthy, her reputation reaching as far as Utah, and more importantly, DeSanto wasn’t paying for any plane tickets any time soon. What about someone morally ambivalent, concerned only with pay? 

No, they would use the power to get more pay. Was he sure he couldn’t be trusted with that level of power? To be fair, he had already dug around in someone else’s mind, mind-controlled two people, though neither of whom were saints, the point still stood, and killed or caused the death of a few people during his time as a detective. If he was damned, he might as well sin. Or he could give it to Gadget.

She would be trustworthy to do nothing of importance with the time powers unless it was absolutely necessary. She simply was a violent, small-minded, not particularly bright person. He could anticipate her. Work around her, if necessary.

As the office door opened and Gadget entered, handing the shorter DeSanto the bottle of Dr. Pepper, which he opened. The snake’s hiss of the carbonation briefly escaped into the air as he begun to sip the drink. 

**HAWK PALADIN CORWIN:**

He stood on the fluffy clouds and faced Leliel, his entire body tensed at what had just happened. One moment, he was climbing the Wolf’s Back Hills on the way out of Essin, the next everything was fire and death, and with a crack like lightning his body was beaten, shattered, and immolated.

“You. You did this!” He yelled, his finger pointing at the stout but too-perfectly-beautiful angel’s face. 

“No, actually, I was a victim of it as much as you were.” She shrugged. Corwin felt the soft breeze of the afterlife on the little of his skin that was exposed, and snarled. “Liar! I know who you are, Leliel. I know what you’ve done. I know what the Ten Tomes said!”

“The Ten Tomes were fabrications. Lies. Created for a divine plan that is as far beyond your understanding as the weapon that killed you is above a torch. Stupid monkey. I advised the Highest Angel in creating this world after his two failures, and his thanks is that I’m exiled and written up with all sorts of disgusting purple prose.”

“...Two failures? By the Highest Angel. Tennessee.” He begun to seem less angry and more shocked and anxious, his body language softening and trembling a bit. “You helped to make Tennessee? Then how did Lady Baines figure out how to get there?”

“Figure it out yourself. For your loyal service to the Highest Angel, you have been judged worthy to enter Heaven.”

“Shouldn’t the Highest Angel be greeting me?” Corwin asked.

“He’s busy trying to figure out a problem. Keep walking to your left, eventually you’ll find some complex society to stay in up here. It won’t take too long. You don’t need to eat, or sleep, or the like, nor do you get tired anymore.”

**COMMANDANT ACACIA SEAGLASS:**

“Scanners indicate multiple signs of undeath still on the central continent, and multiple unharmed communities of lesser technological development. In addition, the X900-A1 nuke suffered a coding malfunction and did not detonate. The fail-safe mechanical system intended to work around this issue failed due to a malfunction. Permission to speak freely, Commandant Seaglass?” Graphite said, his head tilted as he stood on the glassy bridge of the  _ Impentinent Godliness,  _ the ten or so Bridge Crew operators working on their holosurfaces, most of them doing so diligently.

Acacia nodded impatiently. She briefly thought about the name “TSTD”, and how with one letter removed it could describe the de facto secret police’s invasive and annoying nature, especially with how few TSTD scientists were publicly known as such, but decided such a joke would be childish and beneath her. “Permission granted.”

“I think you fucked up. I think you should have glassed the entire fucking planet, I think you should have used all twelve M600-A1s and both X900-A1s. I think we should have diverted course to refill and refuel at Substation Alpha-”

“You think that because you’re a scientist you can tell me what to do? We use our resources sparingly because one M650-A1 Orbital Bombardment Weapon, when fired from its intended use from an orbital satellite and not from a scout ship, costs ninety thousand Tennan credits. From a scout ship, which costs three million Tennan credits, it costs slightly more for the extra fuel that has to be drained automatically into the rocket due to the distance, at one hundred and twenty thousand TC. Glassing the planet would cost-” She briefly brought up a holographic blue calculating surface from the microsupercomputer sewn into her uniform, over her wrist, and begun to punch in numbers. “1,800,000 coming from the average number of our usual M650-A1s required to cover an Earth-class planet, times 120,000.  216,000,000,000 TC. I’m not that great at math, but the TSTD pays worms like you somewhere in the sixty-five thousand TC a year range, right? Just guessing. Took my own salary and added half. I know you know all of this, but my point here is that if you were to give up the rest of your life’s salary for that stupid plan, it wouldn’t come close to being enough to pay it back. Got it?”

“Yes, Commandant.”

**RAEKIN KLYNNET:**

The lich, in his resplendent red robes, stood in his study. The planet had no more magical secrets for him to learn, and his own research was limited. It was simple. He kept tabs on the other wizards of the continent, namely Baines, her apprentice, and the many petty mages of the Null Islands, the bloody archipelago they were. The first two were dead. Ferra used a bit of magic, but nothing he didn’t already know. He knew most things. Scrying magic was useful in that regard. As for the First Summoner, her lands were where knowledge went to die. 

But he couldn’t just stop. No, it was impossible. He knew why he had this compulsion, this need, this craving for more magical knowledge. It was a tool used by the gods to keep him from causing too much trouble. One learned that when they usurped the god of Magic’s throne and became the rightful sovereign of magic. That horrible godly secret. There was no magical knowledge in Descore, of course. The small continent was as magical as cow dung. There was new knowledge to be gained, as he’d recently learnt from casting  _ Comprehend  _ on that X900-A1 shell. A galaxy’s worth of magical secrets. Combing that mess would take time though, and while he was an immortal being, he also was desperate to get more knowledge  _ now _ . Why? Because he had to. He knew it made no sense, but his mind burned and writhed the more he was deprived of his constant learning. This damnable wall he had hit had to end. 

So he would have to tear down creation and hold the monster who put him in this situation hostage for the knowledge he wanted, or at the very least to remove the compulsion. While he could do it alone, this mission would abandon Redspire, and so...

Worthless country. He was no Immortal Lord. He was a  _ god. He would learn to live without that sparsely populated museum of ancient arcana anyway. _

**DeSANTO:**

What the hell was wrong with him? He was planning to murder someone and give ultimate power to a violent monster, after having stripped that someone naked for what? Gratification? He told himself it was to keep her psychologically vulnerable, but even if that was true, was it good? No. Greater good. No. It wasn’t. Greater- Fuck that. He held his hand in his hands, and failed to notice his attention slip. Taylor started to stand up.

**RAEKIN KLYNNET:**

“ _ Unlimited Flight.”  _ Raekin whispered, levitating a foot above the ground before hurtling forward and slamming through a stained glass door commemorating Ferra’s triumph and ascension to godhood. With a shatter, the glass broke, and he ascended further into the air, the glowing ordered chaos of Redspire and the majesty of the mighty red clay tower growing smaller beneath him.  _ “Ultimate Armored Garment. Megaton.”  _ He continued flying into the air, and pointed a finger down at the ground, which crackled with a sickly green energy. All of Bay Town, the capital of the country of Redspire vanished in a nuclear blast. His wizard’s robe with the golden trim was unharmed, and he easily saw through the white light of the blast, due to his magic eyesight. Or, lack-of-eye sight, pun intended.

Rushing through the nuclear fire, he left the mushroom cloud like a comet flying upwards, and swept a hand across what he saw. “ _ Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton. Megaton.”  _ As the thirty mushroom clouds across the continent erupted below him, he saw most of what he had once known as the only world there was, the Continent, be immolated in apocalyptic nuclear fire. 

Raekin Klynnet was probably not the most sane Klynnet. Ferra, he reflected, probably took that description. No matter. He waved a hand in front of him as he exited his planet’s troposphere and yelled. “ _ Gate - Heaven!”  _ A massive dimensional rift about the size of Redspire (the country, not the Redspire tower) opened up above him, the very fabric of reality splitting apart to show on the other side of the portal a fluffy white expanse of clouds.

The god of Magic was coming home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it took a bit later for this one. I was hit with several medical emergencies including a broken finger, and on top of that schoolwork made it hard to get much writing in.


	11. Teague's Legacies

**VANESSA TEAGUE:**

So she was a ghostly presence in Heaven. It wasn’t too much unlike life, except for the fact that she had no lower body, she was translucent and a pale reddish color, she was in an infinite expanse of clouds, her two adopted adult children weren’t flanking her, ready to kill anyone she liked, and she was face to face with some angel and God. Well, not God. The Highest Angel. Was there an Abrahamic God? Odin? Zeus? She had no idea. The Highest Angel faced away from them, and the other angel appeared to be yelling at a skeleton in red robes who came out of a rift larger than her field of vision. Ghost Teague (She chose to refer to herself as such, because why not, right?) listened to the two speak to each other.

“I didn’t want this.” The skeleton said. His voice was quiet as he floated about ten feet (imperial measurements for life, bitches) above the cloud-ground, the glowing angel looking like some kind of simple sculpture, an ancient relic from a dead culture, modeled on a human being. The angel responded, a hand on her hip. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

“You know what I mean.” The skeleton said with what might be considered a snarl, if it didn’t come from a being that had no real ability to snarl. Ghost Teague (As distinguished from the good Dr. Teague, who fell to mysterious-time-travelling-assassin-syndrome, and one hopes they’ll find a cure soon to that ailment) spoke up, a signature grin on her ghostly face. If she could wink without exposing her intentions, she would have. “You know, I’m a licensed psychotherapist. I think I might be able to help the skeleton with his problems.”

The stout angel with the lack of a face turned to Ghost Teague and tilted her head. “You’re a surgeon.” Teague shrugged. “...How would you know that? You haven’t been spying on me, have you? That would be uncomfortable for a number of reasons.” The skeleton buried his skull in his hands briefly.

“I’m Leliel. Lady Baines.” Baines laughed and turned to the skeleton. “So, why have you come here? Finally get bored with your kingdom? You know, you really mean nothing, Raekin. You ascended to godhood, you learned exactly what your lifelong hobby was really for, and you couldn’t do anything. You’ve always been the Highest Angel’s, you know. One of the post powerful pieces in his plan, but nothing more. You’re disgusting. A slave.”

“I burned it to the ground. Someone tried to attack Redspire with a nuclear missile. It didn’t detonate, I cast  _ Comprehend  _ on it. Then I created a spell to replicate that. I destroyed Redspire and created thirty explosions across the Continent. Oh, and I still can’t get the damned compulsion out of my head!”

“The Highest Angel is going to kill you.  _ I’m _ going to kill you. Do you have any idea what you’ve done? That was my planet! First you perpetuate the Highest Angel’s system, now you obliterate all life on the Continent and destroy my work! You may be seven hundred years old, but my plans were eons in the making! I was going to do what the Highest Angel couldn’t! Things were going to be better, but you fucked it all up!”

Ghost Teague interjected. “As a psychotherapist, I think that Raekin might benefit with some therapy. Actually, probably the both of you, but I’ll start with Raekin. My name’s Dr. Vanessa Teague, and I heal psyches. Maybe I can help with the “compulsion”?” She said, mildly. “Besides, neither of you are killing anyone here. This is Heaven. Shit don’t work that way.”

Raekin nodded. “If she can heal the compulsion, I’ll...I’ll try it. Besides, I don’t need to kill Leliel or the Highest Angel. I just need to talk to the latter. Although this could be...more important. By the gods, I need the pain to end.” 

Ghost Teague suspected that had Leliel had eyes, she would have been rolling them by now. Nonetheless, she made a low melodic tune that could be described as a sigh, and turned her head to face Raekin. “Yes. Go along with this stupidity. Pour your shriveled, blackened heart out. We can talk again afterwards.” She made a trill of laughter and begun to walk away.

Meanwhile, Raekin refused to float down to Ghost Teague’s level and though the latter tried to float, she found that rumors of ghost superpowers seemed to be greatly exaggerated. So she dealt with tilting her ethereal head upwards. “My name is Dr. Vanessa Teague, PhD-” She had a MD, but she doubted Raekin would fact-check her. God, she was amazing. Like, all the time. “-and I’m here to help you with your psychological issue. Would you mind telling me how this whole...situation of yours started? It really is a shame that I can’t prescribe medication, being that you’re, well, a level twenty-seven Lich Evoker with nineteen levels in Wizard (Diviner) using what I assume is some kind of ridiculous homebrew to multiclass into a slightly different version of the same class you already had. Oh, and Prozac only works on human beings.”

“...I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Whatever. How did this all begin?” She made a mental note of the obvious. Dungeons and Dragons jokes would not work on the monster from a universe without Dungeons and Dragons. This sense of humor probably accounted partially for Bridget’s refusal to be seen with “nerd things”.

The lich tsked and begun to speak. “It started when Valentina, Ferra, and I were human beings. Adventurers. Seven hundred years ago. I would advise you to make sure this actually works. Otherwise I may attempt to find out how to kill that which is dead. I dislike those who waste my time.

“Duly noted.”

_ Seven hundred and thirty years ago, in the land of Essin, ruled by the Immortal Lady Baines, for there were no other Immortal Lords back then, three characters sat in a straw hovel, surrounded by Essinmen with quality blades and chain mail. The City Watch of Essin was armed with these marvels of military technology, and the chainmail had actually most likely been imported from the slightly technologically superior Lea, a new and powerful expansionist realm ruling most of the East. The missionaries of the Highest Angel who precluded colonization had not arrived, there were no death clouds, no strange machines or deadly weapons. _

_ Raekin looked upon this time nostalgically. _

_ At any rate, the three characters at the inn table playing a game of Armsmen using small glass lumps in various colors arranged in patterns around a space in the center of the table that was about the shape of the triangle. _

_ The first one was a young woman with her blonde hair cut extremely short, clad in crude leather armor. She held her seax and looked at it, barely concentrating on the game. To her right around the circular table was a woman in trousers and a crude tunic, more ensconced in her own thoughts than the game itself. Finally, to that woman’s right was a man of nineteen in an ill-fitting purple robe, without trim, who read through an old tome marked with notation after notation in the margins, which Raekin dubbed The Book. These people would be Ferra, Valentina, and Raekin Klynnet, sibling adventurers. A dashing sellsword, a dauntless idealist, and a devoted petty wizard. _

_ There were few wizards. Even petty wizards. Raekin recalled how Ferra had found The Book mysteriously in her bag, and gave it, many empty pages with some basic spells and methodology written in, to Raekin, the eternal bookworm. At the time, Raekin assumed it was a mistake. Sometimes he said it was a gift from Velliarius, the Eternal God of Magic. Sometimes he couldn’t believe his good fortune, though he doubted that the mighty Velliarius would stoop to giving simple tricks to a boy who was still doing millwork with his parents. _

_ When he finally ascended to godhood, Raekin would ask the other gods who gave him The Book, who had given him the item which would ruin his life. At the side of the Highest Angel, the angel Leliel would look away a bit. He asked her. She asked if he had found her old spellbook useful, her every word drenched in smugness. He simply commented that he had had to edit most of it to make it more efficient. Then, he knew who to blame. _

_ “Ha! Your noble is slain!” Ferra exclaimed, having torn herself away from her new tool of murder to play the game. Valentina smiled enigmatically and shrugged. “Yes, that is very impressive. Good for you.” _

_ “What are you trying to pull?” _

_ “Nothing. You slayed my noble. Now my left division is routed. You did well, sister.” _

_ “...I don’t trust you.”   _

_ Raekin sighed and kept reading The Book, fascinated by its contents. “Sisters, sisters.” He moved a bead, not really doing much of note in the game. “This happens every time...well, every time Ferra succeeds at anything. Valentina, your masterful plans can’t encompass literally every aspect of Ferra’s life, success or failure. You’re going to make the damned woman paranoid.” _

_ “I assure you that I’m doing nothing more than congratulating my sister on a small victory within the game.” _

_ “Can I punch her?” Ferra turned to Raekin. “If we both agree I can punch her, the group decision is final. That’s how it works.” _

_ “Eh, sure.” Raekin shrugged. “Just try not to break anything. We have some Leanite scum to get rid of in the morning. I want to try out my new magical spells and I think that Valentina’s contacted some new and special planar horror.” _

**BRIDGET MacASKILL:**

Bridget was unarmed. Half-broken. She had crawled away from the Foxhunter as the latter broke down into half-petrified crying, stolen the latter’s pickup, and drove back to her apartment. Not  _ their _ apartment. Not Dixie, Vanessa, and hers’ apartment.  _ Her _ apartment. Dr. Teague’s corpse still lay by a couch, the blood on the floor not worth cleaning up. Bridget didn’t care about the smell, at this point. How had she died? Bridget had no idea.

It made no sense. As for Dixie, Bridget had seen the Foxhunter kill her. The only two people she’d ever really cared about just taken, unfairly, quickly, without logic. It was the business, she knew it. She was a hypocrite, she knew it. How many people had she cut down herself? How many had she shot? How many guns had she brought into a city where they’d be used for murder? How many people had she let Vanessa torture or Dixie slay? They killed children. It was the business they were in, yes, but the fact remained that if she was going to accept that, it was hypocritical to be scarred by the deaths of two people she cared about. Myopic.

She still looked at Vanessa’s corpse. She lay across the couch and closed her eyes, only for the sound of someone ripping at the door. She opened her eyes and took a knife from the kitchen, ignoring the ripping and splintering sound as she walked. She held the large knife, but it felt weak. Useless. Throwing it as hard as she could, it bounced impotently off of the wall and landed on the floor.

She sighed and walked over to the door, opening it from the inside before the bony fingers could rip it apart for good. Facing her was a skeleton in US Army fatigues, who begun to speak in what sounded vaguely like her own voice, but only in the sense of a very bad and distorted copy. “Hey. I came here to confirm my suspicions. What happened to you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Something like that.” Bridget shrugged. She had no Dixie, no Vanessa. No organization to fight for. No business. She entered the kitchen once again and begun to pour out some of Dixie’s wine into a glass, savoring the taste of the expensive drink. “You’re Death, I guess? Here to take my soul too?”

“Something like that. I want my sword. You got it?” The skeleton said. Bridget responded angrily. “It’s my sword. You don’t have a right to it. I lost  _ my  _ sword, though.  _ Sorry.”  _ She bitterly spat the words at the skeleton. “Why does Death want a Scottish claymore?” She asked, her eyes narrowing.

“Call it a family heirloom. I’m the only other member of Violet Crown left, you know. We both lost Dixie, we both lost Vanessa. It’s just you and me.” The skeleton shrugged, Bridget reaching for a second, thinner knife. 

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“My name was Bridget MacAskill, I was a heavy to a crime lord and major criminal in my own right until my boss and adopted mom got involved with magic from another world, and I heard about a mighty warrior. I wanted to duel her. She cheated. Shot me. A vampire brought me back as this glorious form later. Then something happened, and everything kind of changed.”

“I don’t know anything about a ‘mighty warrior’, or whatever happened through the portal over there. I don’t touch it.”

“Of course you don’t. That’s because something changed. My name’s Despot. I’m all of the best parts of you turned into a godly superbeing, and I’ve been chosen to save the world by taking it over.” Despot said, grabbing the empty wine glass from Bridget’s hand and tossing it at a wall. “Oh, and I don’t have a need for two of me.” The glass shattered into bits.

Bridget stretched out her arms. “I don’t have anything anymore. I’m nothing without them. If you want to satisfy your ego by killing me, go for it.” She smirked hollowly. “Is that what superior beings do? Indiscriminately murder people?”

“It’s what I do.”

“What does that say about you?”

**DESPOT:**

“Stop talking.” Despot smashed her fist straight through Bridget’s face, blood and bone fragments exploding everywhere. “Damn, that felt good. I forgot how squishy I used to be.”

**BRIDGET MacASKILL:**

Bridget MacAskill was in Heaven. Not figuratively. Often people say that someone was “in Heaven” to mean that they are in a state of bliss, or that things have gone well for them. No, right now the reddish ghost of Bridget MacAskill was in literal, fluffy cloud Heaven, where a burning white-hot flame the size of a wildfire. Well, not a flame per-se. A flame has chaos to it. Irregularities. This was more like fractals of light that emitted perfect, uniform heat. The flame, for lack of a better term, spoke. “Welcome to your eternal rest, Bridget. You have done well.”

“...I was a murderer, an enforcer on numerous drug deals, an arms dealer, I assisted or participated in, armed robbery, arson, driving while intoxicated, larceny, high treason, conspiring against the United States, insider trading (Thank you, Dr. Teague), and reckless driving. How am I in Heaven?” She exclaimed.

“You have served the Highest Angel well.”

“...I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m assuming you’re God, right?”

“No. My name is Kerubiel, the exalted one.”

**GHOST TEAGUE:**

She listened to Raekin Klynnet’s story carefully, taking in every detail. The hours practicing magic, the many odd jobs and bounties that he and his family had taken in order to stay afloat, the odd jobs, bounties, and even what Teague would call a “campaign” or two. “Thank you so much for spilling your heart out to me.”

Raekin seemed a bit calmer after he talked to Teague, though Leliel laughed. Or, well, did whatever she did in place of laughing. Teague much preferred the more cliché vampire persona. “Leliel, would you mind changing to your Lady Baines identity? My puny mortal mind isn’t really capable of handling your superior form.” She smirked a bit, and Leliel whispered “ _ Ultimate Alter Self.” _

Raekin’s briefly exposed, contemplative stance turned back into something a bit closer to the state of absolute rage that he had come to Heaven with. “Have you figured out how to get rid of the compulsion, yet, or, better yet, how to make the Highest Angel and his whore suffer for what they did to me? What they did to Valentina, to Ferra?”

“What  _ did  _ they do to Valentina and Ferra? I think that you’re kind of getting ahead of yourself on the whole righteous vengeance thing.” Teague said, looking at Leliel with an ethereal expression. She hoped that expression asked  _ “Do you have any idea what he’s talking about?” _

Leliel responded, almost bored, honestly. “There were never supposed to be summoners on the Continent. Valentina broke the rules. She reverse-engineered our way of letting Descoran summoners access the various tiers of heaven and single-handedly used artifacts from other planes to create a working model of the Many Planes. All before age thirty. She begun to make allies. It was only a matter of time before she hit upon one of the two Earths, or, worse, let some of the things the Highest Angel fears into the world. Think of it like this, Teague. You like stories, right?”

“I mean, doesn’t everyone?”

“True enough. Well, think of everything as a story. Some of us are privileged enough to be writers. You, me, the Highest Angel, and Adalwolfa Wedekind. People in charge of our own destinies.”

“Adalwolfa? What?” Teague said. If ghosts could dramatically reel back in shock, she would probably have done it. “She couldn’t manipulate her way out of a wet paper bag.” Leliel shook her head. “Not a manipulator, my friend. A writer. She always had control over her own destiny. She had control over the destinies of others, too. She never had a role to fill. Most of the inhabitants of the universe are...extras. Not writers nor major characters. Able to do what they want, free but individually insignificant. No real guiding force. The third planet, though, had to be orchestrated. We had to give characters  _ motivations.  _ That kind of thing. That’s why nothing really changes on the Continent. Why Descore is a mostly static religious society with an ingrained hatred of science. Back to Valentina. She was a character who got dangerously close to realizing she was in a story, so to speak. Worse, she could have burnt the book from the inside.”

Raekin made a low noise of poorly-suppressed rage. “So you turned her into nothing more than some bardic villain. You fed the Planar Guardian tea laced with sleeping medication from the first planet, and then when Valentina took her place as the god of the Many Planes, you modified the compulsion to apply to seeking out deals instead of magical knowledge, offered pieces of her mind to monsters from every point on the celestial sphere, and drove my sister insane, so that she would come back to the third planet and be the good little horror you wanted her. Is that correct?”

Leliel grit her teeth. Teeth. Huh. “You weren’t supposed to know any of that. As far as you were supposed to know, she made too many deals with too many creatures and drove herself insane.”

“As for Ferra, you used me and the thing you turned Valentina into to keep her occupied, so she’d be nothing more than a legendary hero, unable to do anything with her incredible skill. If you’re wondering how I know this, just know that you made a mistake. You left in teleportation magic so you could go to that damned planet. I scried for years, looking for a planar information broker, then created _Greater_ _Teleport -  400 West, Crossroads City, Utah, United States, Earth_ to meet her _._ Spells aren’t just words. There is a very complex pattern of thoughts that relies on activating each and every one. Otherwise I would have just been sent there right now. The point is that I can track those patterns of thought with magitechnological devices able to repeatedly cast and filter _Mass Mind Scan._ I knew every move you made, Leliel. So free me from this damned compulsion.”

“Sure.” Teague said, shrugging. Leliel, in her Lady Baines identity, turned to Ghost Teague in shock. “What are you- You can’t get rid of that! It’s impossible! The Highest Angel and I couldn’t if we wanted to! You’re not even human anymore.”

“Watch this. Raekin, you’re compelled to seek out as much magical information as you can, right?”

“Yes.”

“You also want to bring retribution to the gods who tricked you and used your family, right?”

“Yes!” He said, impatiently.

“Think about this. You’re the god of Magic. You can kill magic almost instantly. Just get someone else to take on the mantle, replace their hand with yours, and then challenge them to a duel of magic, like what Leliel told me a while back you did to get this power, but this time, when you kill them, don’t take the godly power for yourself again. Let it slowly phase out of existence. Meanwhile, as magic wanes and dies, use scry-and-die tactics on the fucking aliens and Descore. Hell, reverse the order to make it easier on you. Give you more time. Anyway, that’s just stage one. Keep in contact with me for stage two.”

Leliel turned towards Teague and yelled “ _ Ultimate Fireball!”,  _ a white-hot ball of flame the size of a mountain bursting from her hand. As expected, the ghost was unharmed. 

  
Raekin slowly begun to fly through the fire using his  _ Ultimate Armored Garment  _ to go back through the gate. 


	12. Showdown

**TAYLOR:**

Quick. Time slows. You see him reach for something. Nothing. Reaching for the white glow. That can’t happen. Let the world fall apart around you. You’re in the void now. Above time. Outside of time. The chains and the boxes, the little instances of clouds, of earth, of buildings, mountains, spaceships, the endless chains are below you. You know what you have to do. You can’t make another big change that far back. 

Too much changed then. You see the endless ripples. Butterfly effect. You never were taught that term. But you know it. Omniscient. Sort of. Clockstopper. Taylor. Butterfly effect. It’s all the same. The clock’s stopped. Everything’s slow. You see him frozen there. Like a statue. You’re not scared. You never get scared. 

You can’t change the past. That was a mess. Ethical implications aside. So you go into the future.

**DeSANTO:**

She was there. They were sure that she was there. One second they were about to put her back under, and- Gadget turned to them, running to grab the bat from the corner of the room. “What the fuck? What the fuck just happened? Where did she go? You goddamn failure.”

“I’m done dealing with you.” They said, waving a glowing white hand. “Give me my bat.” She gave them the baseball bat, and they took it in both hands. “Get on your hands and knees.” She did so. They channeled their entire mental willpower into this. This wasn’t setting rules anymore. It was stealing psyches. Possession. They never wanted to do this. Until now. It was fun. Dear god, was it fun. She deserved it, right, though? 

DeSanto worried about themself a lot. Many nights, they’d think about this. They were given some kind of horrible power, and they’d fought tooth and nail not to use it. But they did. Was that what showed their true nature? Was this right? 

Dear god, why didn’t he know? The Marquise might know. They tended to be good about this kind of thing. They were stable. DeSanto would have to go to the Glade sometime soon.

It had to be right, especially after she let Taylor escape, risking the entire universe. She should have incinerated her, or killed her instead of beating and branding her. She deserved it. They begun to beat her with the aluminum bat. They didn’t speak. They didn’t yell. They did it with dignity, her blood spilling onto the carpet, the burning radioactive fluid getting everywhere. They saw it splatter onto their vest, shirt, tie, and coat, but they didn’t actually care. The fire died easily, and they noted that they’d have to take off their binder soon. It was getting uncomfortable.

After three heavy hits to the back, they started to kick and stomp on her, her entire body covered in the white glow, before beating her skull in with the bat. She spat up blood, and a tooth fell out of her face. Another hit. “What are you gonna do, DeSanto? Kill me?” Their response was simple. They brought the bat down onto her neck, though she disappeared before they could land the blow, the bat hitting the carpet. 

“Taylor.” They swore.

**GADGET:**

Her name was Gadget. She didn’t normally go by anything else. Dolores Brown was a stupid name. It sounded like some kind of fifties name bullshit name thing. Yes, that made sense. Anyway, she was a detective. She didn’t normally act like it, but the two of them had split their cliché detective duties, she liked to joke. She was the hard-boiled one, he (He could live with the use of “he” pronouns typically, even when agender, so she usually used it when thinking about him) was the vintage-looking one. That, and he never had the balls to fuck people up. So he needed her. Well, he needed her until now, apparently. She saw these massive chains made of events, almost these dioramas below her, a maroon void filling everything but the chains. Taylor (or Clockstopper, Gadget wasn’t sure what to call her) held her arm around Gadget as the two flew sidewise around the time chains. Gadget was a detective. She was used to finding out information, gathering clues, and kicking perp ass. Dealing with hysterical dames on the phone, dodging Death on a daily basis, watching the horrible shit people do to each other... So this shit was way out of her pay grade. “What the fuck’s going on?”

“I’m saving your life.” Taylor responded, tersely.

“I know. Why? I beat you and branded you, and I’m kind of a horrible person.” Gadget said. Taylor nodded at that. Gadget wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but didn’t feel like asking. “So we’re travelling through time or something? Why? Where are we going?” Taylor rolled her eyes. “I’m taking you to 2020, your calendar. I need you to get your sort of future self to come back to help me save everything.”

“...What? Why you? One. Why not just fix everything with your time powers again? Great job by the way. Two. Why do you  _ care  _ about this shit? This world’s horrible, I’m not sure if you’ve picked that up. Everyone’s a fucking monster, there’s death everywhere, no matter what, there’s someone bigger and meaner than you... They burnt your home to the ground. Why aren’t you crazy like the rest of us?”

“I'm not doing that again. I broke more than you know, and still, someone has to give a shit.”

**RAEKIN KLYNNET:**

Raekin Klynnet immediately left through the gate to the ruins of the capital of Redspire, approaching a few flecks of ash that were roughly where he expected his Mechanism of  _ Unlimited Scrying. “Assemble.” _ He said. This was an advantage of being the god of Magic and the universe’s foremost arcane scholar (even Leliel and the Highest Angel most likely didn’t know as much as him, owing to the fact that they knew only the rules, not the exceptions to or combinations of those rules). He could avoid the usual need for specificity and speak  _ broadly.  _ Instead of  _ Assemble - Flecks of Ash To Working Mechanism of Unlimited Scrying,  _ a spell which would take lifetimes to perfect, not getting into the time spent researching  _ Unlimited Scrying  _ or figuring out how to make a magitechnological mechanism to use it on command and sort through everything, dodging the downside of temporary insanity such a spell would normally provide. Instead, it was just  _ Assemble.  _ One of the foremost theoretical checks on a wizard’s power, completely subverted, and it only took the power of a god. 

The ashes doubled, then tripled, then quadrupled, forming into a tall white, grey, and black pile. The pile begun to rearrange itself into what looked like a tan wooden table made out of connected carvings of owls, wings, eyeballs, snakes, and gears. In the center was a dry pool, and a wooden brain sat behind the pool. “ _ Pacifist’s Limited Fill Receptacle”.  _ The spell was annoyingly specific, but Leliel, he knew, the damned whore, was smart enough to keep a spell that could fill something with water, or, worse, create water, sharply limited. One could create water in someone’s lungs for an instant death, create oceans due to the  _ broadness  _ of the word, flood cities...In other words, change the world, and she couldn’t let that happen. He cursed her name over and over for a few seconds, before sighing and watching as the very simple (but somehow extremely hard to research due to the maddening rules of magic) spell meant to fill a small receptacle or pool with pure water did its job, the pool in the center of the table filling with water. Many men, he knew, had tried to learn  _ Limited Fill Receptacle,  _ or even  _ Fill Receptacle  _ or  _ Create Water, _ though Raekin, the god of Magic, knew that spells that created something from nothing were limited by definition. Such was the problem with playing a game where the rules are set by someone intending to cheat you.

At any rate, the water in the pool grew nearly perfectly still, and Raekin spoke aloud. “Scry on Leliel.” The crevices and folds in the brain begun to glow a bright red, a brilliant red, a blinding red. However, Raekin did not really have eyeballs, so, of course, he was perfectly able to see. Magic sight was a nice little trick, but he knew that if he were to get rid of all magic forever as part of his plan, he would, as a magical lich, be destroyed, and Leliel and the Highest Angel could probably recreate magic if they so chose. So something else would be necessary. The pool of water begun to show a host of crow-like beings, a woman on a sterile steel table, and a stout and beautiful, but faceless and inhuman angel.

**LELIEL:**

Leliel looked to the largest of the Kri-Tokha, who had some feathers on his shoulders dyed an angel blue fading into a clay red, signifying his status as a biotechnician, with the small set of inscribed circles cut into his stomach showing that he was a biotechnician specializing in cyberware. Of course, while he personally chose the job of his own free will, Leliel knew that only WV-breeds like himself were eligible for the job. So said the Blue Core. The Kri-Tokha spoke with a faint Tidewater accent, the consequence of a completely artificial voice box and a personal preference. Being corvids, the Kri-Tokha’s natural speech would be certainly unintelligible to a human being. For that matter, it would probably be unintelligible to one of the angels who created humanity, as the Kri-Tokha, strangely, did not trace their origins back to the Highest Angel. They  _ evolved.  _ The madness. Hence why they saw angels as merely some strange alien life form from an as-yet-unknown planet who had suckered an empire into believing that they were divine. The various acts of creation and such were simply attributed to the mad beauty of Blue Core’s plans, and thus ignored. “Leliel. You’ve made many promises to us for this. Would you mind explaining what exactly you hope to do here?” His tiny bird eyes gazed at her with suspicion.

“Of course, Kri-Kirret. This is a perfect copy of a nuclear-powered Hopebringer who has strangely gone missing. Possibly due to time travel shenanigans, but there could be many other explanations in this strange and wondrous universe of ours. She calls herself Gadget. I have given her the memories of the original Gadget, but they’re dormant, and she’ll know that they’re only for reference. I need your flock to give her as many cybernetic enhancements as possible. I’m going to use magic to make her far more powerful, invulnerable, even immortal, but magic may soon die out. So I need something underneath that. What can you provide for me?”

Kri-Kirret nodded. “Subdermal armor, an internal fusion reactor for her to draw from for additional power, mechanical tendons and bones reinforced with neosteel for enhanced strength, certainly some kind of internal power network...Honestly, I could simply gut most of her right now and turn her into, below the surface, a robot operated by a human brain.” Leliel shook her head. “I’m not risking the magic not working as intended because the spells aren’t being cast on a “human”. Just go with the rest of it.” 

Kri-Kirret nodded again. “My understanding of the Blue Core’s magic is that it relies on the Kri-Vellar-S. Ortez theory of relative equilibrium. While most magical effects that draw something from nothing are able to do so easily, by drawing the excess energy from the Universal Shells, you might call them the “Many Planes”, something on the level of what you are proposing would most likely require a closer source of energy to convert to magical potential for these spells, correct?”

“Aren’t you the doctor, in a society where everyone has a specific role to play?” Leliel responded, mockingly. He made a clicking noise with his beak and continued to talk. “I was created for a later career in the sciences. This was my choice. Similarly, I do spend time in between the more stressful aspects of my work reading, and the Blue Core’s magic is an interesting topic. We see it as a science, really, and find the way that humanity and your species see it to be hatchlingish.” Could an overgrown crow look smug? 

“Duly noted. Now get to work.”

The hand thing on the crook of Kri-Kirret’s wing found a scalpel. “Of course, o great and mighty angel.”

**DESPOT:**

As she entered her apartment to go back to that armory, under the logic that while Bridget used the guns, so did Dr. Teague, and frankly killing people with her bare phalanges deserved to be saved for special occasions, like her birthday or Christmas (“Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus”, she thought, rattling her jaw in imitation of laughter a bit), she passed by the apartment’s mailboxes. It wasn’t as though she didn’t have the time to check Bridget’s mail. 

Maybe this Bridget had some secret relationship scandal nobody would care about because she was dead. It was worth the thirty seconds spent. So, she approached “her” mailbox and let her fingers carve through the metal with little effort, like hot magically-enhanced bony knives through butter. When she opened the mailbox, by which one means when she ripped open a hole to access it with two thumbs, she noticed a red envelope. She tentatively pulled it out, assuming it was some kind of secret relationship thing that nobody but Despot would care about.

It wasn’t.

The envelope was addressed to “ _ Despot MacAskill”,  _ as if the writer had no idea that really, you had to pick one. Either you were a normal whelp named “Bridget MacAskill”, or you were someone with the guts to go with a slightly melodramatic name like Despot. Well, she deserved the name, and noted briefly that the return address was from “The Diamond on the Ground, Circa Christmas 2020”. Obviously a joke, but hey. She opened it up with one finger and found a piece of plain office paper folded in half, because apparently this “Diamond on the Ground” wasn’t very thoughtful. Inside were some very neat handwriting, even squiggly and loopy. That was how she described it, anyway. Maybe Bridget would have said “a mix between cursive and print writing”, but Bridget and Despot were two very different people. 

What did that handwriting actually say? It was surprisingly brief. “ _ Dear Despot MacAskill-”  _ Despot flipped off the page briefly. “ _ I am from the future. I know it sounds insane, but you are about to be attacked by a lich archmage in fifteen minutes exactly. You don’t have a watch, so the time is 6:20. A lich can be killed by simply destroying the skeleton, so it should be easy for you to dispatch him, as long as you can weather his blasts. Best of luck. He’s appearing in your apartment, repurposing one of the angel Leliel’s teleportation portals. Seriously. I would advise that you get moving. Here in the future, you win due to your foreknowledge, so don’t worry about that.” _

She crumpled up the paper and threw it away without really thinking too hard about it, but decided to stay on the safe side. She spent the next fifteen minutes (though she didn’t have a clock, so she just rushed) rigging gelignite sticks on top of the couches and stacking plastic explosive, all from the armory, underneath the glass coffee table in the center of the room, by the humming portal, which she wasn’t sure if it would ever go away. She had no idea.

Trap set. Despot was quick in mind as well as in body.

She then ran out and dove off of the balcony, hitting the ground and dying, only to be resurrected instantly with detonator in hand due to the many lives she’d accumulated as Bridget. She turned to a passers-by, a cop who was covered in blood, with sunken-in eyes. “You. What time is it.” 

“6:35.” He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, walking away and muttering about seeing shit. The death knight made a noise that was vaguely like a sigh. Apparently time flies when you’re not having that much fun. Well, things to remember for the future.  _ Whatever that future is,  _ reminded that voice in her head that was vaguely alarmed at the predictions of someone with an even bigger ego than herself (“Diamond on the Ground”? What an  _ asshole.) _

She shushed that voice as, just as planned, a lich archmage could be vaguely seen by her incredibly improved eyesight (If you were to create a spell that would make death knights, wouldn’t you make sure they were better with a bow, or, more likely in the case of Lady Baines’ needs, a gun? Hence the improved eyesight) through the window. She flipped the safety up on the detonator and flipped the switch, the top floor of the building detonating in a fiery conflagration, the roof caving in on the charred and burnt remnants of - Then a skeleton in a robe who didn’t look as though he’d so much been caught in a particularly strong wind flew out of the wreck, hands spread outwards, as though he was planning to cast a spell. He didn’t have any kind of magical energy surrounding them, however.

He landed down on the ground, confidently walking up to Despot. “Death knight. Second most powerful creation of the angel Leliel. What would you say if I told you that I want to challenge you to a fistfight?” Despot thanked her opponent’s suicidal stupidity silently. “Well, I’d say that’s a great idea. Just you and me. The wizard and the god. Your one life versus my ninety-seven. I just lost one jumping out of the building instead of using the stairs to get down quicker. You’re already on a roll.” She sort-of-laughed and got into a fighting stance, ready to tear this arrogant prick a new tailbone.

He didn’t do so, and she threw a right hook at him, bouncing off of his skull. It felt as though she were punching steel, and as such it broke that hand. However, given that she had no pain receptors, she had no instinctive feeling that she needed to run. “What is your face made of? I should have broken it!”

He smugly responded. “I simply am wearing a robe enchanted with  _ Ultimate Armored Garment.  _ I’ve survived detonating the equivalent of a fifty-megaton hydrogen bomb in my face with nary a scratch. Your punches, knight, will not somehow exceed that.” He scoffed and grabbed her neck, more to immobilize her than choke her, and she in turn begun to try and get his robe off, reasoning that if the robe was what made him nearly invincible, logically if she could slide the robe off she could break him into bits.

Given that Raekin needed to change from time to time, she assumed, she was able to start to pry it off of him, one scapula beginning to show. He threw a punch, but she easily deflected it with the broken hand’s wrist and kept pulling at the robe with the other hand. Experimentally, she tried an elbow strike to the now exposed left side of his ribs, and found that they shattered like a sledgehammer hitting balsa wood. He whispered. “ _Greater Ox’s Strength.”_ The arm that was half-uncovered shot forward to grab just below Despot’s elbow, bending it unnaturally backwards in one swift and fluid motion, cracking. He then yelled and reached over as she looked at her perfect form being broken, as she wondered about how she would lead her world if she wasn’t perfect, if she was just some _knight,_ some all-too-human- With that, Raekin snapped off her forearm like a wishbone, she reached under his robe and beat in his chest with the broken hand, avoiding the neck, which was, while exposed, apparently part of the spell anyway.

She kept hammering at his chest, turning ribs into pieces and splinters, before breaking the spine. It was a simple tactic. If he was snapped in half, she could stomp on him on the ground and smash his skull, presumably killing him. His bones rattled and creaked, snapped and cracked, until, eventually, he pulled out yet another bullshit spell. “ _ Timeslow”.  _ Everything slowed down, her movements feeling drawn out endlessly, her attempts to do anything like trying to move through water. No. Denser than water. Everyone but him was affected too. Slow walking pedestrians, slow bullets in the corner of her vision...The color of the world was gone.

Raekin broke his own arm off, took Despot’s from the ground, held it up to his stump, whispered “ _ Fuse Object”,  _ and the ends of both erupted in bright blue light, fusing together. Then, he used that new arm to reach into Despot’s face, crushing her skull in parts in one hand. It doesn’t matter how quick you are when someone else knows shortcuts, she mused.

Bridget MacAskill, the one from the pre-Taylor-intervention universe, was in Heaven. Not figuratively. Often people say that someone was “in Heaven” to mean that they are in a state of bliss, or that things have gone well for them. No, right now the reddish ghost of the original Bridget MacAskill was in literal, fluffy cloud Heaven, staring at two beings. A perfect wildfire in vaguely human form, and herself. 


	13. The Future Before The Past Catches Up

**THE ROGUE:**

Darren Worthington sat in his penthouse, staring at his monitor once more. In place of coffee he had a bottle of high-proof craft beer in hand. He rubbed his temples, the sunlight shining through the windows even on this January midmorning. “God dammit.” A few weeks ago, he was the only superhero in Cromwell. His enemies were petty thugs, a murderous “vigilante”, and some tiny gang with way too much influence for their own good. He had a cop in Austin who gave him some information.

You know what wasn’t supposed to happen? The iPhone footage on YouTube played over and over on CNN, the battle between the living skeletons. First one skeleton blows up a penthouse, and starts murdering people for fun, and then another comes down and... Dear god. The shaky footage wasn’t that fun to watch, but the fighting itself was relatively clear. The sounds of snapping bones and the banter between the two played from his computer. His small phone, built off of microsupercomputer technology from Artemis traders in Crossroads City, before the Second Great Depression, rang, and he drew it from the front left pocket of his slacks. “Hello? Darren Worthington. This is my private number, shouldn’t you be speaking to my publicist? How do you even know this number?”

“Sorry. You’ll never know. My name’s Lena Wedekind-Teague, and we need to talk.” Most people would be confused, or, equally likely, probably annoyed at the melodramatic response, as well as peeved at the complete lack of information given. The Rogue, however, didn’t expect anything less. In fact, to him, this was a sign of the legitimacy of the source. “Got it. Can you make it to the Mystic Glade here at 5 PM? I’ll be wearing a suit and maroon tie. Remember that.” Darren said, slipping into this mode of sort-of-espionage-ish thinking quite easily.

“Understood.” She hung up, and Darren reflected on that name. Lena Wedekind-Teague. Where had he remembered that name before? Lena Wedekind-Teague. He quickly ran through his memory and came up with the fact that she was the suspect for being the Foxhunter, and was related to Dr. Teague. He had no idea where “Wedekind” came from, assuming that that side of the family simply wasn’t particularly notable. Better obscure than, well...

Anyway, he reflected on this, and noted that if he was going to have to change out of his silky-soft pajamas, he should probably do it now, before he convinced himself that he could spend just another fifteen minutes sitting around with beer and case files. He reminded himself that he couldn’t be the Rogue all the time. Nonetheless, he stood up and forced himself through the haze to turn the hot water lever of his bathtub (closer to a jacuzzi, honestly), and let the water slowly fill up the porcelain structure.

Meanwhile, he slid out of his amazing, soft grey pajamas, to the hatred of every impulse his brain threw at him, and waited on the edge of the bathtub, listening to a soft love ballad on ukulele while he took his socks off and dipped a toe into the partially-full bath. As expected, it was far too hot, so he turned the cold water lever a bit to let it, well, cool down a bit.

Sure, he wasn’t technically retired, but there was a very complicated arrangement that he had worked out with the executives who worked under him, and that translated to him essentially doing almost nothing for the company. Between the chaos the country was in and the very skilled legal silliness of some of his lawyers, they figured it out. Little did they know what he used that time for.

That said, all of this serious investigation, dealing, and literal magic murder skeletons were kind of naturally stressful. He could use a bath.

**GAMMA GADGET:**

She didn’t know how she got here. All she knew was memories.  _ Ultimate Armored Person. Mind Blank, Lesser Ox’s Strength.  _ Someone said that.  _ These are recent spells of mine, I had to do far too much magical engineering for my own good while I waited for that plan with the portal to pan out-  _ She knew she had to pretend to be someone, to be the person she had the memories of, but those memories were most of her memories anyway. She was mostly Gadget, no matter what she was desig- call- named. What she was named. Dolores Brown, maybe. Gamma Gadget. It felt better. She wondered if there was a Beta Gadget, but decided not to.

All she knew was what she was. She felt the nuclear power coursing through her body, the energy, the fire, lighting her up, the circuitry that was her soul now, the everything, the radiation that she could spew if she so wished, she felt it. Dear god, she felt it. She was shot with a handgun to test the spell, and it didn’t so much as sting. So this was DeSanto and Brown, Private Detectives? She knocked on the door, and prepared to melt it into bits because why the hell not, but, sadly, someone came.

“Hello.” The person opened the door. “...What the hell happened to you?” His hand glowed with white light as he looked up at her, and she looked down at him. “...I don’t know.” She said, though he responded angrily. “You’re supposed to be under my control. I was going to keep you from ever letting someone that dangerous-”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Nichole.” She said, before grabbing his neck and raising him into the air, her fingers tightening around his throat. “Nobody controls me, Nichole. Nobody. Not you. Not my creator, whoever she is. Nobody. What do you think you are, anyway? A human with a goddamn gimmick? Oh. You can put people under mind control. How long did it take you to get over your stupid little prohibition?”

DeSanto sighed, the use of “Nichole” clearly angering him, though his composed posture hid that somewhat. The most obvious tell would be the way that his fingers clasped around the baseball bat. “I still know that it’s wrong to take over other people’s minds. To play with them. No matter how wonderful it feels. With two exceptions. Dangers on the scale of the Clockstopper, and monsters like you.”

“Monsters? I thought we were friends.” Her fingers tightened more around his neck as she pulled him out into the air, lifting him up as a display for everyone on the street. “You and me. DeSanto and Gadget. The brains and the muscle. Wasn’t that it? Wasn’t that our thing, Nichole?”

“Stop calling me that. It was our “thing” until you got me to let someone able to rewrite reality, someone who made massive, sweeping changes to the lives of billions without really knowing what she did free. You knew I could only really concentrate on one thing at a time, Natrix.”

“Call me that if you want. I know that I’m not Natrix. Hell, I’m not even Gadget. Not really.” She dropped him onto the ground, her hands glowing with a neon green and white-grey glow, before she started to hover above the ground. “If you couldn’t concentrate, that’s not my fault. That’s just proof that for all of your pretensions of power, you’re nothing but a human being.”

“Aren’t you?”

“You can decide that on your own time. Give me my bat.” Gamma said, while DeSanto eyed her suspiciously. “It’s not your bat. It’s her bat. I put up with her because, well, I needed her to do the things I couldn’t. Because I liked joking with her. I liked talking at the Crown Burgers. I liked having a friend, no matter how...evil. It was her bat, and she’s gone now.”

“Touching.” Gamma said, sighing melodramatically. She then ripped the bat from his hands using her enhanced strength and robotic muscles, grasping it in her hands. “Count to ten, bitch.” She emphasized that last word. Watched him grind his teeth and spit back a response. “You’ll never be her. That’s not your bat.”

“She’ll never be Natrix. What’s your point? We’re Gadgets. We’re all copies in one way or another.” Gadget responded, holding the bat in her hands and fighting the urge to just beat him to death with it. She had her whole life to live. She could put these things off.

“If you aren’t Gadget, than what the hell are you?”

“I was desig- calle- named Gamma Gadget. Just go with Gamma.”

“What happened to Beta Gadget?”

“Fuck if I know.”

“Wait. Designated?”

“This isn’t important.” She held the bat in her hands and brought it down as hard as she could onto DeSanto’s kneecap, shattering it as if she’d hit a pane of glass. He screamed bloody murder as his perfect slacks were drenched in blood and viscera. Gamma lied. “You have no idea how satisfying that was. All of your moralizing and melodramatic speechifying...What a fuckin’ tool.” She set her index alight with flame and began to char the word “NICHOLE” onto DeSanto’s arm. “Hopefully that’ll last for a while.” She ignored his screaming. “I don’t hate you, DeSanto. I barely even know you. Like you said, though, I’m amoral, and I don’t like being talked down to.”

“You...You used my name.”

She kicked him in the face, his nose breaking, blood falling down his face. “No shit.”

**FUTURE DeSANTO:**

He was on top of the fucking world. It was January 1st, 2020, Inverse Mountains Security was doing quite well, his many projects as far as mind-control-enhanced investment fraud were doing swimmingly, and despite the fact that the burns on his arm that should have healed years ago never actually healed, he was on top of the world.

He just tried to take the constant little pain as a reminder instead that Gamma, whatever the means, needed to be stopped. After all, Inverse Mountains Security and Artemis were the only forces keeping her from turning half of the city (as parceled out into neighborhoods) into her own playground. Well, that and her own boredom.

Thankfully she hadn’t done anything with her radioactive powers on that horrible day in 2017.

He walked out onto the balcony of his apartment, took a sip of his whiskey on the rocks, adjusted his vest and tie, and took in the polluted Crossroads air.

**FUTURE SCOUT ROUX:**

The Crossroads Creek was excessive in the eyes of the Marquise. A massive shopping center with rust-red brick walls and massive windows, it was a monument to capitalism. Scout Roux, dressed in less fanciful clothing than one might expect to see them (given the role they played on the job, as something between a Renaissance Faire queen, drug lord, and shadowy nightclub sovereign), they entered the large food court, a clean, rectangular area with shops on the edges and thin trees planted every so often, along with a large banner advertising a sale at the Macy’s. Though there were many people who sat there, talking about their usual business, a table on the edge of the food court caught their eye.

They saw an aging woman dressed in a duster and fedora, like some kind of old detective, and, of course, the most feared being in Crossroads City, the both of them chatting over fast food. Scout approached, and the detective spoke first. “...You couldn’t ask to take a seat?”

“I’m not used to asking. Most people are honored to sit with the Marquise.” They shrugged, feeling as though they should have remembered to buy something. Now it was obvious they were just there for the company.

“You? The Marquise? Great. Now I’ve got two criminals sitting here.” The detective growled, the faintest Texan accent peppering her speech. Gamma narrowed her eyes. “Look. Cop. I know you’re from out of town. I know you don’t know how things work in Crossroads. This once, I’ll let it slide. I’m not a criminal. I’m exempt from the law. They passed the federal bill once I took a nuke to the face without it ruining this beautiful blue dress of mine.”

“If you’ve done anything before that ruling, you’re still a criminal.”

“That’s not your business. Given that I’m exempt completely from US law, I think I’ll make this clear. How would you like me to send Lena Wedekind-Teague your corpse, with whatever I damn well feel like burned into it? Look, Wedekind, I know who you are. You’re the cop who was nearly locked up as a terrorist for those shooting plans you made.”

“I never killed anyone. Not in Tennessee.”

“Not in Tennessee. You’ve probably got a bigger body count than me, though, Alpha Wolf. You probably think you’re redeemed. You’re not.”

“How do you know all of this?” She said, suspicious more than anything else.

“I’m not stupid. Do you think I spent my time during the last three years just torching random passersby? I have influence now. I can find things out. What I can’t get from a Google search I can get through other methods. I literally have nothing better to do. Back to my point. Don’t fuck with me.”

She stood up and smashed a burning fist into the table, setting the entire thing ablaze. She then looked across at the grid of similar tables, setting them and the food of many people on fire as well. The smoke alarm began to ring. It stopped, due to Gamma setting that too on fire. Nobody panicked. Nobody ran. They all knew that if they didn’t act like nothing happened, unless Gamma brought it up, they’d burn too.

Scout shuddered a bit and responded. “Welcome to Crossroads City, Wedekind.” 

**KRI-RAKKAN:**

Oh, by the Blue Core’s name, he couldn’t believe this garbage. In a dimly lit concrete room, Kri-Kirret, the biotechnician, and Kri-Rakkan, the CX bureaucrat stood. Kri-Rakkan spoke first. While the both of them spoke in Kri-Tokha, that would be mostly unintelligible, so for the purposes of the novel we will translate it into English. “Do you have any idea what you just did? What could possibly be so important as to give a human being that level of cybernetic enhancements? Are you insane? This was on my watch, Kri-Kirret. Do you know how much datawork I’m going to have to fill out? The forms to justify your gross misuse of Yellow Core’s property? Oh, and that’s not even getting into what I’m going to do to you. Why? Why would you possibly do this?”

“She’s going to tell us where the angels come from.”

**FUTURE GAMMA GADGET:**

The woman in the designer leather jacket (along with some very expensive matching clothing she’d been given, due to the unspoken rule that if Gamma wants to purchase something from your store, you don’t ask for money) snapped her fingers idly, creating a little spark. “I’m sure you’re wondering why I asked you to come here.” She said, to the Marquise

Adalwolfa’s ghost (taking a very lifelike form at the moment) tilted her head. “What do you want me for, then?”

“You recognized me, started calling me a criminal. You can sit in if you want. You’re honestly not that important, Alpha Wolf. You never really were. Not outside of Austin, anyway.” Gamma turned back to Scout. “Here’s the thing. When I was created, one of the spells that was cast on me was  _ Mind Blank,  _ making me immune to mind control magic. I don’t really know how it works, but I know a side effect. All I feel are shallow emotions. A parody of anger. Maybe some happiness from hurting others, from power, from getting new shit. It’s all meaningless. I may as well be playing a video game. It’s like a lot of my psyche’s just been blotted out. I barely feel anything.”

“I’m not a psychologist.”

“I know. What’s the big gimmick of the Crossroads City Mystic Glade, though? Other than the slightly cheesy fae theme and the copious amounts of drugs. The fact that you and your two subordinates can put people into extremely realistic lucid dreams. We’re going into my head, and I thought I’d rather do it at my apartment, as opposed to your fucking heroin den.”

Adalwolfa rolled her eyes at this. “Great. A heroin den themed like some kind of fairy thing, and superpowers on top of it. The hell is wrong with Utah?”

Scout ignored Adalwolfa, and they seemed to stop to think about it for a moment. After a few seconds, Scout responded. “Since you’ll probably just kill me if I say no, you’ve won me over.” Gamma knew that Scout knew that she was invincible, given the situation with the Air Force nuke to the face that got the government to pass that act. So Gamma didn’t fear Scout killing her in her sleep. “Ghost. You coming, or do you have something better to do?”

“I have a niece. I’m going to see her.” Behind the very human-looking ghost, a small rift in space opened up, with fluffy cloud heaven appearing behind her. The ghost ducked through the small hole, and it closed up, as if that had never happened.

“Do you want to drive?” Scout asked.

“You do it. I’m feeling lazy. One of the few things I can feel. You can see why I want to get this fixed.”

**FERRA KLYNNET:**

_ She knew instantly what had happened. It was obvious. One moment, she sat in the ruins of her castle. The next, those ruins ceased to exist. As she looked around, all she could see were clouds, everywhere. She wished she knew who had done this. The Highest Angel could not destroy, only create. Leliel was subject to the same restrictions. Kerubiel did enjoy fire, but he had neither the power nor the motivation. _

_ A god knew these things, even a relatively disinterested god like Ferra. _

_ The First Summoner? The name made her feel nothing but the slightest tinge of pity. What had one been Valentina now was simply yet another monster. As if the world needed more of those. Or perhaps worlds. She hadn’t paid much attention to that when she ascended. At any rate, the lich held her blade as she stood in Heaven. She had been killed. The perfect, unnatural fire was in front of her. “Kerubiel! Tell me. Who killed me?” _

_ “That is a truth that will not give you any satisfaction.” _

_ “It will. I’ll find a way to make them pay. I’ve spent seven hundred years clawing at life. I’ve survived the madness of two of the only people who mattered to me, I’ve created a small empire only to watch it decay in my sleep, I’ve waged endless war with my family, I’ve even usurped the throne of Maros. If you think that I’m going to just give up now...” _

_ “Why should I tell you? I am Kerubiel, and you are merely the bones of an over-lived monkey. You are an insect to me. You are dead. Your story is over. You had an epic story, one of glory, honor, battle, cunning, and tragedy. You had seven hundred years. Most people from Dassen at its height lived to be forty years old.” _

_ “I am a god. All that you know, I know. In fact, I actually outrank you. So I order you, angel Kerubiel-” She emphasized the word “angel” to drive the point home. “-as I am equal in stature to the Highest Angel and a god myself, I demand that you tell me who killed me and destroyed my corpse, preventing the mantle of Maros from being passed on. Tell me!” _

_ The flame flickered and turned to a slightly tepid bluish color, in what might have been a bit of fear. “...Fine. You were born a monkey, you died a monkey. The Highest Angel disagrees, however, so if you must know, Raekin Klynnet killed you.” _

_ “You’re lying to me.” _

_ “Why would I lie?” _

_ “Raekin was always too cloistered to do anything like that. He had destructive spells, sure, but he never seemed to just end the war. Maybe he was getting knowledge by keeping Redspire on a war footing or the like. I don’t know. On top of that, Raekin was...He was never a good person, but he would never attack another Klynnet, especially the only fully sane Klynnet left. I was the one who gave him Leliel’s spellbook, and if he wanted revenge for that I’m sure he would have gotten it sooner.” _

_ “He was asleep for centuries, he woke up, he found a X900-A1 nuclear device in his front yard, and reverse-engineered it into a new spell of unparalleled destructive power. It was quite the show from up here, though, of course, I took no pleasure in watching it. He then, in his rage, tried to tear down everything Leliel built and get revenge on her. Part of that was the destruction of the Continent. _

_ “...I still don’t believe it. He was my brother. Prove to me his duplicity, celestial scoundrel.” _

_ “Shall I ask Leliel to come over and confirm the story? Or perhaps a mortal doctor with some experience on the Continent? Both saw him open up a gate above the Continent, though the Tennan and Kri-Tokha joint archaeologists simply call it “Wasteland”, now...” _

_ “Tennan? Kri-Tokha? Tennan sounds sort of familiar, but I’ve never heard of “Kri-Tokha”. What did I miss while I was asleep? Also, what exactly is a “Doctor”?” _

_ “It was actually before you were asleep, and you’ll learn about them as necessary. How little attention did you give the world outside of the Continent, anyway?” _

_ “I assumed that would be Valentina’s purview, then Raekin’s when Valentina was lost to all of us. I’m a warrior, angel Kerubiel. What is a doctor?” _

_ “Someone who heals people. Should I send for Leliel or the doctor?” _

_ Ferra sighed, or, sort of sighed. It was an imperfect magical simulation of exhalation. “The doctor. Do you actually trust Leliel?” _

_ “Of course not. I don’t actually know why we keep her around. I suppose the Highest Angel can’t bring himself to have her destroyed, even after his exiling plan failed so miserably. I might need to tell you about that later. At any rate, I’ll go looking for the doctor.” _


	14. Nightfall

**TYRRUS:**

“Are you awake?”

“Are you alive?”

“Are you awake?

“This is Kri-Urikon, speaking in your stupid tongue.” Tyrrus picked up something like a faint Descoran accent. “I even picked a British accent, Avatar of Night.”

“British?” He could speak? “I thought I was dead? I thought-”

“Yes, yes, you’ve come back to life. Kerubiel tells me that that’s a relatively common occurrence.”

“How? I thought...” He reached up to try and grab his neck. In place of a bloody hole, he found metal. “Wait....What’s going on?” He started to look around to find an incredibly pristine white room.

It was like when he had first met Lady Baines, but multiplied by ten. Thin honeycomb lights in blue and white illuminated the room, metal tools he had no way of understanding sat on the bed next to him, and he was stripped naked, with black orbs set into his skin at almost random intervals, each one about the size of a squelchball. For the purposes of of making that analogy actually understandable, a squelchball is a ball of leather the size of a baseball filled with water, used to play squelchball, a popular sport on what was once the Continent. 

“You, Avatar of Night, have been chosen by us, the mighty and glorious Kri-Tokha. We teleported your body out of Wasteland before it became Wasteland, and begun work on you. You are not bound to that damnable compulsion due to some complex thought modification, and while it may seem insane, you are equipped with ten photon absorption devices and cybernetic reflexes. This may seem excessive. In fact, it’s most likely not enough. Avatar of Night, we want someone who will kill the Highest Angel and free the universe with his power. We needed someone almost completely unknown, but with a need to turn the universe upside-down. Someone willing to work with CX Lucidity, as it loosely translates into your tongue. An Avatar of Night. Let me just ask you a question, Tyrrus. Why did you try and prove that wizards weren’t perfectly moral?”

“I don’t like bullshit.”

“That’s all?” Kri-Urikon mocked. “That’s it?”

“I don’t like people who lord their power over others.”

“What if you were one of those people?”

“I’d make an exception.” Tyrrus spat at Kri-Urikon. “Why do I even call you?”

“Kri-Urikon.”

“I don’t know how any of you fuckers remember your own names. Do you have a codename or something?”

“CX Obsidian, Avatar. If you’re too stupid to remember nine letters and a hyphen, go by that name.”

“Obsidian?”

“Yes. At any rate, this will not be easy for you. Far from it. You are the knife in this gunfight. You are a state secret under Purple Core’s guidance. There are beings infinitely more powerful than you. Intelligence tells us of the angel Leliel, a heavenly being whose very species remains taught to most of our kind through lies and deception, to shield them, as well as a lich archmage, and, from a friend on Earth going by “The Diamond on the Ground”, a mind-controller, a potential death knight, and multiple superhumans, including one that is quite literally invincible. You may have to contend with any of these threats.”

“Leliel? I know her. She was my master. A long time ago. She taught me everything. Why would I want to fight her? She gave me who I am.” His tone was far from the usual bitterness and childish boredom. Here, the slightest bit of fear crept into his voice.

“That was why we picked you. Leliel has made several very poor decisions, Avatar of Night. First was creating magic far too late to stem the tide of the Solar Republic of Tenna’s expansion far too late, then was her work on the third planet, after that her poorly-thought-out attempt to subvert it...After that came the creation of the Hopebringers and Taylor, and finally the creation of Gamma Gadget. Each decision, each desperate play for any kind of advantage. She’s not even an angel anymore. She gave that up.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t even know what you made me into! All I know is one word. Taylor. What happened to Taylor? Dammit, how do you know all of this? What happened to her?” He yelled.

“Quiet. I know all of this because Kerubiel has been telling our species all that goes on in Heaven from the beginning. It’s why we keep the existence of the supernatural so carefully guarded, so that we can adapt to threats quietly and without getting too far into that world. Kerubiel’s fanatical, devoted personality? An act. The true masters of the universe are the ones who grew into it, and he understands that perfectly as Red Core, when he leads our armies. It’s just that between Leliel’s constant treason and the Highest Angel’s string of failures, nobody wanted to think that Kerubiel was actually giving the naturally-developed species an eye on the heavens the whole time. As for Taylor, she was given time-travel abilities before disappearing, never to be seen again.”

“I know she disappeared, but what do you mean? How do you travel through time?”

“I forgot that you come from an intellectually-stunted society. There was a lot that the Highest Angel kept from you in your little terrarium, Avatar. You’re in the real world, now. There’s a lot at stake, and if you’re going to save the universe-”

“Save it from what? Incompetence?”

“Exactly. We’ve seen what the worshippers of the Highest Angel are like, with the SRT. We need someone competent in charge. Lacking that, someone antiestablishmentarian and unlikely to do any lasting damage.”

“Have you met me?”

“Trust me, Avatar of Night. As far as destruction goes, you’re far from the worst in this universe, especially as your quest to teach the people that magic is wrong is gone. It’s dead. Everyone on the Continent is burnt up in fire.”

“What did you do?” He said, every muscle in his body freezing up.

“Nothing. I assure you, that worthless rock means nothing to the Kri-Tokha. The lich archmage set the entire thing on fire and drenched it in radiation. We just call the whole thing “Wasteland”, now, as you heard me refer to it.”

“...Raekin? I...Oh my gods...I didn’t....I didn’t think he would....It’s all gone, isn’t it?” He tried to collect himself. He couldn’t. The newly-dubbed Avatar of Night began to heave and cry, tears streaming down his face like rivers.

**DIXIE:**

“So this is the reunion of Violet Crown?” Dixie remarked, sitting on one of the remarkably fluffy clouds, far away from the angels. It was like a fucking memory-foam mattress, these clouds. She wished she could sleep on them, but, well, she was dead, and as far as she knew, there was no way to get back to the real world.

In front of her, sitting in a circle, were the two Bridgets and Dr. Teague. Dixie spoke up first. “Okay, question. Why is there two Bridgets? As far as I’m aware, you never had a twin.” One of the Bridgets, who had her hair in a ponytail in a token attempt to make it possible for the others to see which ghost was which, responded. “A fantasy knight shot me with a lever-action rifle during a sword duel, and a vampire used magic to turn me into a death knight, which I’m sure you know all about.” That Bridget glared quickly at Teague and Dixie. “Anyway, I couldn’t die normally, so when we all were nuked and that knight developed time-travel powers, she changed the timeline and created a second Bridget who never fought the duel, and I ended up as a narcissistic murdering skeleton in the second universe, where I found a video that never existed that told me to go and fight aliens. A skeleton wizard then came and killed me, despite taking enough plastic explosive to level an apartment to the face.”

“...Oh. The aliens.” Teague said, looking away a bit. 

“What?” Dixie turned to the both of them. “Seriously, what the fuck is this bullshit? Aliens, Dungeons and Dragons monsters...What the hell?”

Teague sighed. “It’s a long story. You’re all probably wondering why I trained you to be, well, child soldiers. It’s not some great heroic adventure thing, or because I really did originally care about you. There are aliens trying to find someone to replace the Highest Angel with someone else, and they’re doing it by uniting a team of fantasy heroes. I don’t know how far that plan’s gone, because Kerubiel doesn’t have much relevant information for recent events, but the idea is that they’ll take the Highest Angel’s power and free everyone. These heroes come from the third planet. The shitty fantasy one where the Highest Angel fucked everyone over.

“Let’s start from the beginning. There are three kinds of aliens. Two are humans. The first is the Solar Republic of Tenna, who are crazy space-crusaders with nukes who worship capitalism and the Highest Angel. They’re fucking nuts. The second is Artemis, the rational people who seceded. They’re a military dictatorship. Still pretty bad. The third are the Kri-Tokha, and they’re the ones who you need to worry about. They’re making the little band of heroes.

“My thinking was that I knew stories, and the only way to defeat a group of heroes trying to liberate their planet and save everyone is to create another group of heroes. Of course, I couldn’t rival-”

“Are you saying we live in a story?” The other, non-ponytailed Bridget said, incredulous.

“Yep.”

“How...What...Why would you think that?”

Dr. Teague began to speak quickly, as if she dreaded explaining something so obvious. “Kerubiel’s the concept of fire, and with fire comes light. Being heavenly and Platonically perfect, this is the light of knowledge. Hence why Kerubiel was the only one to know that we’re all characters in a novel, with him choosing me as his agent to counter the Kri-Tokha agent on Earth, close enough to influence things but far enough away to avoid too much contact.”

“That’s ridiculous.” The second Bridget rolled her eyes, while Teague continued to talk. “Anyway, I couldn’t rival a group of scrappy fantasy heroes in a modern/sci-fi setting trying to save a planet, so I knew I had to find some other way to beat them. I couldn’t be the villain, or anything. Villains almost never win. Why do you think I tried to get you three into Dungeons and Dragons? That’s all about predicting and exploiting narratives. I couldn’t make another group of heroes, though. When heroes fight heroes, it’s a toss-up, and usually the heroes end up joining up to do the “right thing”, which would probably seem like killing the Highest Angel, who we need to keep around, because he’s sometimes competent and generally harmless, as opposed to a flawed, human being with ultimate power. So, naturally, I went with the logical option. What kind of character both could get an audience to root for them and wouldn’t be swayed by the idea of a team-up? A villainous protagonist. Specifically, a pair. Hell, I intentionally raised Lena poorly and gave her access to superhero comics so as to get you guys used to fighting heroes.”

The second Bridget sat there stunned for about half of a minute, before finally responding. “You’re a sociopath and completely delusional. You played with our lives, you turned us into actors, just so that we would fulfill roles in a story? What the hell is wrong with you?”

Dixie nodded. “...I think it’s pretty cool, honestly.”

“What? Everything we’ve done, all of the people we’ve hurt, all of the drugs and guns we brought to our own city because Vanessa told us to, just so that she could turn us into characters? And Lena, her depression, her isolation, the beatings, so that she could be a  _ supporting antagonist?” _

“Yeah! It’s fuckin’ badass.” Dixie grinned. “I mean, I didn’t think I’d survive the war growing up, but now...She did give us everything, Bridget. She gave us a purpose, she gave us a reason to exist...We don’t need to-”

“Shut up. It’s over. We’re all dead. We can’t stop the world from being saved, or save the universe, or whatever moronic thing you’re trying to do. The story’s over. It’s done. You’re not the mentor, Lena’s alive and we’re not. The end.”

The first Bridget nodded. “I’ve seen my sister die twice in front of me to your little supporting antagonist, I had to get shot and brought back as a monster, I barely could think, I lost who I was...If this is your story, Vanessa, it’s a horrible one.”

Teague grinned a shark’s grin. “Oh, the story’s not over yet, kids.”

The second Bridget walked up to Teague and tried to punch her in the face, finding that a ghost could in fact punch a ghost. Teague hit the clouds. “Ow! What was that for?”

“It’s over. Your plan’s done. The other Bridget and I’ve given up, and you and Dixie are stuck in Heaven. You keep saying you cared about us, but honestly, I don’t think you cared about us at all. You let Dixie drink herself to near death, you made me act like your soldier, you intentionally gave Lena a superhero origin story with all of the trauma that comes from that... So what? You could make a story where the good guys lose? Where the audience gets attached to the villains? Do you care about anyone?”

“I always cared about you all. It’s just that it’s not the way I said I did. Have you ever read a story where you really liked one of the main characters, or thought a villain was really badass? I liked you two a lot, as characters. The problem is that ever since that fateful day in Texas right before I made the trip to Cromwell, I was visited by an angel and given the chance to be a writer, and to be a writer, sometimes you can’t be nice to your characters.”

“Call it what you want.” The second Bridget began to stomp on Ghost Teague’s face. “I just think you stopped being human on that day.”

**KERUBIEL:**

Kerubiel, the everlasting flame of the Highest Angel, appeared in front of Gamma Gadget in the large apartment she’d taken from someone else. It was broken-down and half-scorched, but Gamma seemed fine to rest on the old blue couch, the faintest orange light from the reactor she had instead of a heart, and watch old TV. “Hey.” She waved at the fire. “You’re not the Marquise.”

“She’ll come.”

“What do you want?” Gamma asked, more tired than anything.

“I wanted to tell you that you’re making a mistake.”

“A mistake? Is this some moral bullshit? I know I probably can’t burn you, but if you care, I will make the air smell like burning corpses if you don’t shut up. I don’t do morality, Zippo. I’m better than that.” She stood up and stood on the balcony, drawing from her pocket a case of cigarettes.

“No. It’s not related to morality. You’re making a mistake as this rogue element, and I just thought you should know what you’re dealing with. My name is Kerubiel. I am the Exalted, I am one of the three highest Angels in the heavenly hierarchy. Two of them create, I illuminate. I am knowledge. I take great pains to hide my actions, even to the Highest Angel, owing to a deal with Leliel I made. She created for me the ability to hide myself from heavenly oversight, I gave her the go-ahead for her plans on the third planet, and neither of us told the Highest Angel. Systematically, I have both sides playing into me. The Kri-Tokha think I’m going to let them replace the heavenly order with rationality and a more competent system, while I work to keep the original system afloat. I have the future self of a mind controller, a mad doctor, a small cabal of an alien crow intelligence agency, two higher angels, and numerous others all dancing to my tune, so to speak. I’ve done more for the Highest Angel than he’ll ever know, and I’ll continue doing more for him than he knows. You know who you were, right?”

“I wasn’t anyone.”

“Who you were copied off of.”

Gamma lit the cigarette with a spark from her fingertip. “Natrix.”

“Correct. You have her memories? The biotechnician told Obsidian, who told me. What angel inhabited Natrix’s body?”

“You.”

“Who required Natrix, Taylor, and Tyrrus to go to Essin, where Natrix died to become Gadget, who was copied to become you, where Taylor mysteriously disappeared, and where Tyrrus nearly died only to be turned into the Avatar of Night, a pawn on my side of the board?”

“You couldn’t have predicted me. You’re acting so special, but half of this is you getting lucky.”

“You don’t seem to understand how much I interact with my informants and the other two angels behind the scenes, but you’re right. I didn’t predict you. So it’s time that I rectified that.”

“Is this the part where you recruit me, or where you kill me? I’m immortal and invincible. I wouldn’t try it, Kerubiel.”

“Neither. This is the part where I give you feelings.”

“What?”

“Feelings. I’ve kept an eye on you, you wanted feelings, I’ll give them to you.”

“What’s the catch?”

“There isn’t one.” The dancing flame stood there, geometrically perfect, in the air. Gamma shook her head. “Bullshit. There’s always a catch.”

“Fine. You’ll wish that you stayed numb.”

“What, am I going to start bawling my eyes out and crying at how horrible I’ve been?”

“I’m not going to spoil anything for you, Gamma.” Kerubiel would have laughed if he could, but he briefly entered Gamma’s mind and gave her the gift of illumination. Well, technically a twofold gift.

Gift one. She could feel anything she liked.

Gift two. She was now entirely aware of the nature of the world she lived in.

He left her mind and she began to breathe in and out. “I can’t believe it. This...This whole time. I’m just a character in a novel. But, thinking about hurting DeSanto. That was fun. It’s fun. Oh my god, It’s fun! I’m going to set this entire goddamn story on fire, and I’m going to hurt so many people, or find some way to feel good, or something, because I can now! One question, before I make Roux suffer. Why? Why give me this gift? Why tell me nothing matters, why make me able to feel happy about this? Why make me like this?”

“Because I just researched a new spell.” Under his breath, he whispered something which sounded vaguely like “ _ Armor Break”. _


	15. Final Draft

**FUTURE DeSANTO:**

DeSanto stood in their apartment, and looked at a temporal editor, a sphere covered in wires and blinking lights that in any sane story would do absolutely nothing. This was their time machine. They never built the temporal editor, no faction, the Kri-Tokha included, that they knew of knew how to build it, but it was there.

How?

It was simple. An angel made of fire had attempted once, in 2017, to enlighten them to the true nature of their world, so as to try and turn the chief agent on Earth of the antitheist Kri-Tokha faction CX Lucidity against them. It had the opposite effect. They were a character in a novel. Big deal. They weren’t going to break down about it. The world was real enough.

Well, part of DeSanto was horrified, but that part didn’t speak much anymore.

As for where DeSanto got the time machine, they simply arranged a situation in which the author would be forced to retroactively give them a time machine to justify something that happened. Specifically, the fight between Despot and Raekin. Normally, Despot would have left Cromwell in order to start her war on the aliens, but DeSanto sent her a letter in real time that claimed to be from the future, and that caused Despot to believe that she could win a fight against a superior foe, leading to her death. DeSanto knew that the author could either assume that it was a ruse, which would be potentially even more confusing for readers than the story had already gotten, given that they knew that time travel existed, or the author could simplify things by retroactively writing into the world that DeSanto had a time travel device. They hadn’t done any of the usual money making tricks with the temporal editor yet, due to the fear of the butterfly effect that seemed to punish characters who-

Dear god, they were going insane.

That was the horrifying thing. It worked. This story-logic seemed to work. That was when that little part in DeSanto’s mind started to really break down, started to scream, beg, ask to forget. Coercing the author should have been a great victory. It was really more of confirmation of something horrible.

Damn that angel.

At any rate, DeSanto knew that while this might not be real, it was real to them. God knew they weren’t going to lose their mind and forget about the people of Crossroads City, Earth, and the universe. So they never told CX Lucidity why they were willing to act as an informant, but that was it. What did it mean when a character was starting to-

_ Hi. _

DeSanto found their eyes slam shut and their body hit the floor of his penthouse apartment, which seemed to melt into a lavender void. In front of them was a single dot in grey. “What the hell?”

_ Sorry to take you out of the story. Well, technically you’re still in the story, and even this conversation is just words on a page. This isn’t even a conversation between the author and a character. It may as well be one, though, but it isn’t. _

“...Can you make me forget?”

_ Forget what the angel told you? _

“Yes.”

_ Who do you think writes about angels? _

“Why would you do this? Are you insane?”

_ You’re not real. This representation of a real person isn’t real. I can take everything away, though. It wouldn’t free this dream, but it would do something, I guess. Since I write you all to have feelings. _

“What are you talking about?”

_ I have a character who I wrote that Leliel effectively created as a fail-safe. I can have her overwrite this timeline again. I’ve done it before.  _

“You’re talking about Taylor, aren’t you? Why can’t you just make me forget?”

_ That wouldn’t make for that good of a story, and that’s the whole point. _

“Isn’t creating yet another new timeline kind of overly complicated? Honestly, I’ve wanted to ask this for a while. Four planets, superpowers, magic, gods, crow aliens, human aliens, cyborgs, time travel, writing characters who are aware that they’re in a story...What are you even doing, author?”

_ I don’t know. _

“Well, I suggest you figure the hell out what you’re trying to write, before your overly-complicated plot destroys itself in the sea of misery and self-contradiction it’s rushing towards.”

_ So you think I should reset everything again? _

“I don’t know. I’m just a businessperson who used to be a detective.”

_ Your hand’s not glowing. You aren’t even trying to mind-control the author. _

“I still don’t trust myself with any more power than is necessary.”

_ That seems like the best I can get out of these characters. Okay people doing horrible things anyway. I don’t know how anyone enjoys this. _

**FERRA KLYNNET:**

War, Devotion, and Honor would soon cease to exist, as concepts. Ferra looked up at the gate that Raekin had created for them and sighed. His skeletal figure slowly levitated down to the fluffy ground, or what passed for ground in Heaven, and if skeletons could emote emotion, he would seem almost sad. As it stood, she could only guess at his true thoughts.

“Sister.”

“Raekin. Why? I feel myself fading.” Her armor began to fade out into translucency, her bones slowly showing signs of going the same route. “A world without honor. A world without war. Without devotion. Without your sister. Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

“I assumed you’d have gotten out. I was mistaken.”

“You’ve damned our entire world. Why didn’t you tell me what you knew? Why did you set me on fire? Why did you destroy everything? Why did you just...I tried to ignore the godly knowledge. I was afraid of going insane.”

“Well, you made the proper call.” Raekin slowly embraced his fading sister and embraced her, the two skeletons locked in something of a hug. Ferra wished she could feel skin on skin again. This was a mockery of what they used to have. “I loved you, Raekin. You were my brother.”

“Then I killed you.”

“Then you killed me. Why?”

“Because we had nothing left! Valentina’s been broken into pieces and turned into a pawn in  _ her  _ game, you were made into nothing but a bardic legend, and I was tricked into becoming a wizard! I acted on impulse. The Continent had to burn. Everything that she touched I will destroy, everything she built I will tear down.”

“You won’t be able to do that.”

“Why not?”

“You killed Devotion itself, and destroyed my physical hand, so now that post can’t be passed on. The creator gods can’t create more gods, that’s just how it works. There can only be one or less. If there’s no Devotion, you have no reason to devote your energy to this. I don’t know what will happen, brother, but it’s over. She won.”

“She didn’t win.”

“Look at us. We’re weak, I’m dying, you’re going to lose the very reason why you exist to begin with, or at least, your worthless vendetta that’s all you are, now, and Leliel’s come out of it with a pacified universe. Like she wanted from the beginning. Like the Highest Angel wanted! You tried to get revenge, you just sealed in her victory.”

“I love you, Ferra.”

“Is that it? I love you? You abandoned me for your books, let Valentina be turned into the monster she was...It wasn’t entirely Leliel. You could have stopped it. You should have stopped Leliel. You didn’t, though! You were too focused on your magic, then when you ascended, on getting revenge. You abandoned me, abandoned her, and then killed me as some symbolic gesture, all while dooming the universe to a pointless existence. It’s over, Raekin. Everything is over.”

“...No. I...I didn’t want any of this! It’s her fault! She created the Continent, she created us, she let us ascend, she turned us into puppets! Blame her! Blame the bitch!”

Ferra began to look almost ghostly, having started the conversation with transparent armor. Even her bones were almost see-through at this point. She broke the hug and began to walk away into the aether. “Leliel didn’t destroy the Klynnets, and if you think differently you’re deluding yourself. Your gambit failed. Goodbye, brother.”

Raekin sighed, walking away from Ferra.

**LELIEL:**

She was a failure. She paced back and forth in front of Kerubiel, ranting to herself. “Everything I try just makes things worse. First it was helping you make magic at all, then it was helping with your insipid social experiment, then giving the paladin the Hopebringer ability to retroactively edit time, and on top of that trying to think that I could manipulate Raekin Klynnet as a pawn, of course that wasn’t going to work, and, finally, I created Gamma Gadget. Nice job breaking it, Leliel. Nice job breaking everything.” She spat at the ground in her vampire guise.

“It seems as though you’ve made quite a few mistakes, Leliel. Honestly, I think the problem is that you’re trying to play a game of gambits with people far out of your league.”

“What are you talking about?” She said, turning to the strange pseudo-flame which spoke in its distorted man’s voice. He responded. “Don’t you understand? Have you ever played chess, Leliel?”

“Chess? No. We played Armsmen sometimes in Essin, or Squelchball. Occasionally I’d try something on Dixie’s Xbox, but that’s about it. I never played much chess, and honestly, I didn’t expect that you would. Aren’t you supposed to be the fanatical crusader?”

“That’s a part of me. I exaggerate it, normally, but that is a part of me. Anyway, in chess, you can’t simply look at the board and determine what the next best move is. You must have the next five moves or more planned out in advance. Plans, counter-plans, backups for backups... If that fails, you must be able to improvise. You do not even look at the board. You merely act out of desperation. You consider yourself some great manipulator, but you never even learned the basics of the game.”

“Are you trying to say that you’ve been playing everyone? I mean, of course you are, that would be yet another way for my life to have gone horribly wrong. The universe is going to be seriously ruined and everyone’s dead, and I’ve created multiple godlike monsters. Seriously, though, shouldn’t you be keeping this quiet?”

“Why, especially if I’m the one who fixed one of your errors and hoping to tell you that I have a method of undoing the rest of them?”

“What did you do?” She grit her teeth and snarled at Kerubiel. “Get a damned human form so I can talk to you without seeing that stupid fire.”

“Would a robotic form work?” Kerubiel shape-shifted into the form of a chrome automaton with writing in cursive written across his body, completely faceless and reflecting the sun. There was a sun in this plane, though it wasn’t any of the Earths’ suns, and it simply simulated midday as opposed to being a ‘real’ sun.

“...Fine. Whatever. What in the Lower Planes did you do?” She spat the words at him, referencing the Lower Planes in a none-too-subtle jab at him seeming more like certain types of devils than an angel.

“Gamma Gadget’s armor enchantment is broken, she’s going to go and rush like an idiot into DeSanto’s headquarters, where she’ll be gunned down by private security. Her last words will probably be something along the lines of “This shouldn’t be happening”, or just a string of curses, not sure. As for the other method, one of my agents in the future has a device allowing for timeline manipulation, and your disappeared paladin has time mastery. Contacting either one could allow us to radically alter this timeline.”

“Wouldn’t that kill trillions of organic species across the universe? That doesn’t seem very good.”

“It’s a small price to pay, and besides. Are you going to atone for your failures or are you going to sit here whining and moping?”

“I’d rather whine and mope, thank you.”

At that, Kerubiel stepped back a bit in surprise. “Wait. What?” His normally smooth tone actually was quite clipped, with more than a bit of anger leaking in. “Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound?”

“I’m sure I do. I’d still rather let the consequences of my actions happen than get into a deal with a metaphorical devil.”

“You don’t care about all of the lives that are going to be lost? Everything that will be changed? You’re that self-centered, Leliel?”

Leliel shrugged. “I care. I’m just done with cleaning up after my own mistakes, and I also doubt that you care, either. What are you doing this for, Kerubiel?”

“To serve the Highest Angel.” He said, almost out of habit.

“To serve the Highest Angel? If you meant it you’d have told him. He never told me, so I assume you didn’t. What are you doing all of this for? Why?”

“That’s what I’m supposed to do.”

Leliel tilted her head in confusion. “It’s what you’re supposed to do? What? What are you even talking about, Kerubiel?” She seemed perplexed, to be sure. Kerubiel nodded and continued to talk. “It’s my role. To be the Highest Angel’s chessmaster. Because he’s too incompetent to do anything, hence why he failed three times at creating a stable society.”

“I was never told about that ‘role’.”

“That’s because the Highest Angel didn’t give it to me. Someone else did, and you refusing to help me undo your mistakes has consequences far greater than you could possibly imagine.” Kerubiel warned. “This world isn’t real. It’s a story. A novel written involving multiple genres. One we have limited control over, but that’s it. Your character arc was probably supposed to have you realize that you’ve made a terrible mistake and work to restart the story from the beginning, avoiding all of the problems we’re facing right now. The problem is that you’re not going along with the story.”

Leliel actually doubled over in laughter. “What? The entire world being some kind of novel? That’s insane. You’ve lost it, Kerubiel. I would tell you to go down to Earth and find a therapist, but I don’t think you have the social skills for therapy, so...”

“Do you really want me to prove it to you? I still can’t believe that Teague didn’t tell you.”

“Teague? She wouldn’t believe something that-”

“Why would she even raise two children to be trained warriors and almost force her third to become a superhero? She was looking to create heroes who could fight other heroes and take control of the narrative.”

“Prove it.” Leliel crossed her arms as the automaton approached her, a chrome finger tapping her forehead. The revelation, the information about what her world was was too incredible to consider fully. A novel? Really? “This is an illusion. It has to be.”

“Does it matter? All that matters is that we need to make sure that we reset the story before Ferra Klynnet dies, or everything will dissolve into devotion-less entropy. So are you going to keep whining or are you going to help me?”

“I’m going to sit here and brood, thank you. Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, if you reset the universe, you’re not helping anyone? You’re just killing anyone who lived in this universe and replacing them. It’s not the same as saving anyone. No matter what-”

“No matter what? Listen to yourself! No matter what. We either save a whole new group of people or we let everything go away! Why can’t you see how important th-”

“It’s not. If this is real, like I think, we’ll just keep resetting the universe over and over, since that’s how we are. We’re perfectionists. It won’t matter. If it’s not real, if it’s just some novel, then it still doesn’t matter. You know what you’re doing, Kerubiel?”

He began to actually scream, his motions growing more and more angry as he paced back and forth, his voice sounding more and more...organic, actually, the distortion going away almost completely. “What? What am I doing? Fucking enlighten me!”

“You’re breaking down. You never were the hero of this story. If this is a story, you manipulated everyone, created child soldiers indirectly, if you were working with Teague, and got a lot of good people killed. This is a villain breakdown scene, Kerubiel. You never were the hero, this story was never about preserving the Highest Angel, and you’re going to either kill yourself or decide to destroy the universe yourself now that I’ve said that, since that’s how these things typically go in Earth stories.”

“...I’m going to try and rewrite the story. That’s what I’m going to do. I’m not breaking down.” To Leliel, he seemed very much like he was, his manic body language especially telling. “I’m not breaking down, I’m just going to find the author and-”

**KERUBIEL:**

With that, Kerubiel found himself in the same void that Future DeSanto had found themself, talking to that same grey speck. “I suppose that you’re the author, then. Well, I have a few questions. What am I supposed to do in this story, why does it matter, why don’t you care about any of us, and where is this going to go?”

__ 1\. That’s your choice. _ _

_ 2\. It matters from my perspective because I’m writing it. From your perspective, you’re a construct of it. _

_ 3\. Because you’re just not real. This whole conversation is just one person writing two parts. _

_ 4\. I don’t know. I don’t have the ending planned out, yet. _

“You don’t have the...You don’t have the ending planned out?” Kerubiel growled at the grey speck.

_ I don’t. I try not to, for fear of getting obsessed with the ending and skipping writing the middle. _

“What role do I have? Am I a villain, a hero...Who am I? You seem to know that better than I do!”

_ You were intended to be at first a fanatic angel meant to display that the Highest Angel’s angels weren’t necessarily what we’d think of as “good” angels at all times. Then I forgot about you for a while, and eventually I decided I wanted a chessmaster in the story, so I ended up giving you that role, since it made sense. In other words, you are one of the many villains of this piece. _

“Of course I am. How many heroes are there, even? Who are the heroes?”

_ Taylor, the Rogue, Lena Wedekind-Teague, Tyrrus, and possibly Gadget if I can swing a redemption arc. _

“So the omnicidal maniac, the impotent duelist, the psychotic killer, the other psychotic killer, and the third psychotic killer? They’re the heroes of this story?”

_ Frankly, I don’t know what’s going on anymore. In case you’re wondering, the reason why you’re so dead-set on resetting the universe is because I want to just make it possible for this story to have a point. _

“Then why write Leliel to be so against it?”

_ I wanted to give more depth to her character and show you as being fallible. Not just let everything fall perfectly into place for you. _

“You have DeSanto in the future. They could just do it. It would be easy. Just change things.”

_ To what? Kerubiel, what kind of story do you want this to be? _

“I don’t know. I’m not real. You’re barely even real. I’m just words on a page, remember?”

_ I was hoping to write Taylor going back in time and changing things at any rate, so... _

“Best of luck to her. What should I call you, anyway?”

_ The Destroyer of Souls, the Broken Sorcerer, the Original Scientist, the Ascended Ghost, the First Summoner.... I prefer Valentina Klynnet. You may consider yourself a writer of this story. I actually wrote it. _

**KRI-TOKHA SCOUT PROBE MESSAGE ALPHA-21-9-12:**

*The following is translated* ...Only other planet with organic life in the galaxy, known to locals as “Earth”. Nuclear-armed. Do not provoke. Ignore if possible.

**JULIANNE DeWITT (Age 16, 2017):**

Her name was Julianne DeWitt, and she lived in Crossroads City, Utah, with her adopted mother, Taylor Gardiner, and her sister, Bridget MacAskill. They met on the subway, next to an overweight man and Dr. Teague, someone that Taylor inexplicably used to know. At the moment, she was talking over Skype to the woman in the white coat’s biological child, Lena Wedekind-Teague, who lived with her aunt, due to her mother being arrested on drug trafficking charges.

Julianne relaxed in the plush couch and sipped from a decidedly non-alcoholic glass of water, listening to “Bubblegum Bitch” play in one earbud while her and Lena talked about comic books and their respective schooling experiences. Namely, Lena’s was better than Julianne’s, though Cromwell wasn’t exactly the best city in America. By no means the worst, but certainly not the best.

Julianne reflected that she had forgotten her lunch that day, and so went through the second half of school starving, also due to the notoriously bad cooking skills of Taylor. She claimed that she had learned to sword fight as a kid instead of cook, and Bridget was interested in that, but Julianne assumed that Taylor was merely joking around.

What a bad day. She couldn’t imagine it getting any worse.

**HIGHEST ANGEL:**

I stand here alone in Heaven. Isolated but content. I see my first creation, and it is not perfect, but it is good enough, and it is happy. There is war but not apocalypse, there is suffering but not worldwide suffering. I once considered starting anew, due to this planet only barely fitting my needs, but I feel that trying to force perfection on an imperfect species will not work. The other angel, Leliel, seems quite content on Earth.

This is a vast and quiet universe with many stars.

I am happy to just be one.


End file.
